TOTP Rewind – the 90s | My memories of 90s chart music

TOTP 10 SEP 1999

Here we are again for another whizz through the sights and sounds to be found in the charts of Autumn of 1999. We’re still in the TOTP On Tour phase of the programme with this particular show coming from Isis nightclub in Nottingham. Neither exist anymore – Isis nor TOTP – but then we are talking 27 years ago so I’d be more surprised if they did to be honest. Gail Porter is our host for a third week running. In fact, she’s done all of these touring shows so far – I wonder if anyone else got a look in?

*checks the TOTP Archive website*

Yes they do. This was her last time on the road with the programme though she would return to present a further 27 episodes up to 2003. OK, with that admin done, it’s on with the show…

Now, if you’re an actor who has given up the regular gig of being in a soap opera to pursue a pop career and you are faced with the task of following up your debut single which was a No 1 hit, what do you do? Well, if you’re Martine McCutcheon then you change tack completely by ditching that classic, sophisticated ballad sound and release a jaunty, upbeat, acoustic backed pop song that would comfortably reside in daytime radio playlists and hope for the best. Under those terms, “I’ve Got You” is a perfectly serviceable track and by securing Martine a Top 10 hit, it did what it was meant to in terms of consolidation. Or did it? After going straight to the top at her first attempt with “Perfect Moment”, was a solitary week at No 6 substantial enough a success? I’m not sure. Ultimately, I don’t think “I’ve Got You” was…well…substantial enough. Certainly the lyrics were lightweight, going on about having the moon, the stars and the sun and flowers not blooming. I guess if she’d done another big ballad she’d have been accused of being a one trick pony so maybe she couldn’t win?

Not only did Martine change her sound but also her look. Just as the sophisticated sonics of her debut hit were dropped, so was her sleek image that she adopted to promote it. “I’ve Got You” required something different and so her dark, lacquered hair was replaced by blonde, flyaway locks that Gail Porter describes as “loverly” thereby foreshadowing Martine’s role as Eliza Doolittle in the 2001 West End revival of My Fair Lady.

Gail goes on to say that mambo fever is still sweeping the nation in the intro to the next act and she’s not wrong as the No 3 and No 1 records this week are both of that persuasion. “(Mucho Mambo) Sway” by Shaft was the record in bronze medal position and like Fatboy Slim and Phats & Small before them, this duo were also from Brighton. What was it with electronic dance music acts in the 90s that so many of them had connections to that seaside resort? It was a relationship that would only be rivalled by my beloved Chelsea FC who, under their current useless owners, became unhealthy obsessed with Brighton and Hove Albion’s modus operandi. Erm…anyway…football rant over. Shaft would shamelessly try to repeat this mambo nonsense in early 2000 by releasing their version of “Mambo Italiano” but the world had moved on and it only made it to No 12. They then turned their attention to the “Wassuup!” Budweiser advertising campaign by setting the overused phrase to a sample of MC Hammer’s “U Can’t Touch This”. What a pair of absolute grifters!

Of course, it wasn’t just the specific sub genre called mambo that was casting a huge influence over the UK charts in 1999 – the whole parent, umbrella term of Latin music was making itself known not just here but on a global stage. We’d already seen massive hits for artists like Ricky Martin and Jennifer Lopez crossover into the mainstream and now, here was our first glimpse of the latest Latin superstar and this one had a family pedigree to back up his claims. Enrique Iglesias is, of course, the son of legendary crooner Julio Iglesias and had already recorded three Spanish language albums before “Bailamos” – his contribution to the soundtrack of the Will Smith movie Wild Wild West – brought him to our attention. I have to admit to not remembering how this one went – in fact, I think the only one of his that I know is “Hero” – but on watching this TOTP performance, I probably could have given it a good guess as to how it sounded. All the ingredients are there – the mixture of Spanish and English lyrics, that overused dance backbeat, lots of ‘whoah-oahing’, some whispered vocals from Enrique, and, most obviously, the obligatory Spanish guitar flourishes especially in the middle eight. In the then clamour for Latin flavoured tunes, it was a heady mix and was always going to deliver a breakthrough hit. Enrique’s looks weren’t exactly going to hold him back either.

“Bailamos” would secure a deal with a multi national record company and the chance to record whole albums in English and a career in the global mainstream inevitably followed. In a parallel world, it would be his elder brother Julio Iglesias Jr. (eh? His elder brother is called ‘Jr’?) who would have that career but his own musical offerings that were released before “Bailamos” did very little commercially and he was left with the fate of living not just in his father’s shadow but his younger brother’s as well. He should have recorded a song about a dance. His Dad’s biggest hit – “Begin The Beguine” – translates as “Start The Dance” whilst his brother’s breakthrough song means “We Dance” in English. A Latin pop version of Ultravox’s “We Came To Dance” was probably too much to hope for!

Oh dear. We have arrived at another horrible low point. I am very challenged by Shania Twain’s success in the respect that I just didn’t/don’t get it. Sure, she’s good looking and can no doubt sing but the hits that she’s most known for, I just couldn’t…well…I just couldn’t. Let’s leave it at that. Actually, no I won’t because “Man! I Feel Like A Woman!” deserves a proper slaughtering. From its dumb title to its honking, parping synth hook, everything about this song winds me up. It’s just so lowest common denominator. In short, it’s stinky as my teenage son would have it. That’s not a view that was shared at the time though. Look at this review in Rolling Stone magazine:

“ “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!” and other high-gloss songs “open with a bubblegum glam cheerleader shout, then blasts into radio-ready rapture with offhand vocal interjections – doot-doot-doot scatting, do-si-do rapping, sexy squeaks, sarcastic Alanis Morissette asides.”

Eddy, Chuck (December 9, 1997)

That all sounds hideous! Who wants to”doot -doot-doot scatting” and “do-si-do rapping” in their songs?! And yes, I know the lyrics are all about female empowerment and that’s not to be discouraged and that its success could be down to its appeal to women record buyers…but I still don’t understand why its sound sucked so many people in. I was clearly in the minority though as it went to No 3 in the UK charts, matching the peak of its equally dreadful predecessor “That Don’t Impress Me Much” and would, as Gail Porter informs us, help propel parent album “Come On Over” to No 1 after being out for 18 months. It would spend 11 weeks accumulatively at the top of the charts becoming the UK’s best selling album of 1999. Bah!

There’s no upturn in quality following Shania as we get the latest boyband teen sensation A1 (awful, awful name) with their second single “Summertime Of Our Lives”. Predictably, this tune was so lightweight, if it had been a bloke on a pub crawl, it would have had its head down the toilet after a half of lager. I’ve read some reviews of it online suggesting its frivolity and throwaway nature should be embraced as, after all, it was the Summer and released to soundtrack the most relaxed of all the seasons. Except it wasn’t the Summer was it? September is surely the start of Autumn so A1 and/or their record label got their release schedule timings all wrong. In a way, that perfectly complimented its awfulness as did its lyrics. Look at these:

“Baby get ready get down
Are you up for it get down with it”

Songwriters: Adams / Cunnah / Ingebrigtsen / Marazzi / Read

Summertime of Our Lives lyrics © Reservoir Media Management, Inc, Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

They just stole that from Five’s “Everybody Get Up” and put the words in a slightly different order. I use the word ‘they’ correctly here as the four lads all have their names up there in the writing credits alongside Peter Cunnah who was clearly looking for something to do after the demise of D:Ream. The single’s debut at No 5 and subsequent rapid tumble down the charts indicated that they had, indeed, developed a big enough devoted fan base to create an initial demand for whatever they released but that they were nowhere near crossing over into the mainstream of record buyers. Spring, Summer, Autumn or Winter, A1 were crap all year round.

Just before we get to the next act, a quick word about the BBC Music Live 2000 event that Gail Porter trailed and for which there were details scrolling across our screens. Said details included a website address – were we all internet savvy in September 1999 in terms of having access to it at home? I think we may have had some sort of dial up connection but I certainly don’t recall being able to get on the worldwide web easily back then.

There was a third hit from The Offspring’s “Americana” album?! Yes there was and it was called “The Kids Aren’t Alright” but it wasn’t as big a seller as it’s two preceding singles “Pretty Fly (For A White Guy)” or “Why Don’t You Get A Job?” so maybe that’s why I don’t remember it. Clearly there’s a reference to The Who’s classic song in its title but it was actually a more unlikely track that caused plagiarism claims to be made which are undeniable once you’ve heard it. “Electricity” by OMD might not seem like an obvious influence for an American pop-punk band but its melody is unmistakably there in “The Kids Aren’t Alright”. Apparently there’s a version of “Electricity “ by LA punk rockers NOFX which adds substance to the accusation. Let’s have a listen…

Yep, that seals it for me. Does that mean “The Kids Aren’t Alright” isn’t any good then? No, of course not. In fact, it was seen as a return to form by their fanbase who had been with the band before those two aforementioned chart busting hits came along and you can understand why. It just has a much rawer edge to it. As with Shania Twain earlier, the lyrics had a deeper message than might have been expected from a song with such a contrived title being about the fates of the people who lead singer Dexter Holland had grown up around in his home town of Garden Grove, California including unwanted pregnancy, drug addiction, unemployment and suicide.

Just a word about the studio audience for this one which seems to include some very committed moshers and a least one crowd surfer. This wasn’t standard for a TOTP crowd was it? Were they specially invited members of The Offspring fan club or had they been given specific instructions by the floor managers to behave like that?

Oh. My. God. Is this really what passed for music in the Autumn of 1999? I speak of “The Launch” by DJ Jean which thankfully I seem to have blanked from my memory banks. This ‘track’ was huge in Ibiza apparently (Gail Porter says so anyway) where its trance-infused house beats (I’ve clearly pinched that from something online as I have no idea what I’m talking about) hit big time, hooked around a NASA themed rocket launch countdown. It’s utter garbage. Clearly the staging of this nonsense was going to require some thought as the three dancers on stage couldn’t carry it by themselves and to be fair to the TOTP producers, they do try something different with swirling camera angles and tacked on filters but it doesn’t overly impress. I’m struck by two thoughts:

Why didn’t the dancers have space themed costumes on? DJ Jean seems to have some sort of astronaut outfit on.
Shouldn’t there have been a voice saying “We have lift off!” after the countdown and “Ignition” parts?

“The Launch” topped the Dutch charts (DJ Jean was from Holland) but fell one place short of that peak in the UK. According to his Wikipedia biography, Jean used to DJ in a club called iT in Amsterdam in the early 90s but as with the Isis club in Nottingham, it doesn’t exist anymore after burning down. There’s got to be a line in there somewhere about burning down the house surely?

Before we get to the No 1, a quick word about the acts that are actually on the show in person in these tour locations as I’m not convinced the quality of them makes admission to these shows the hot ticket that the BBC would have had us believe. If you were in Nottingham this particular week, you would have witnessed Martine McCutcheon, Shaft, A1 and DJ Jean. (Enrique Iglesias, Shania Twain, and The Offspring were presumably recorded in a different studio somewhere or at Elstree weeks prior before the studio renovations started). The previous week in Brighton, it was Shaft (again), Moloko, A-Teens, Ocean Colour Scene and Stereophonics. I’d say maybe two of those eight acts would have piqued my interest at the time.

So, Lou Bega is still at No 1 with “Mambo No. 5 (A Little Bit Of…)”. Again, he’s not in Nottingham but it’s not the video either so it must have been recorded in a BBC studio…somewhere.

In 2000, Bega recorded a version of the track for Disney which was much more sanitised and replaced the girls names in the lyrics with those of Disney characters. The line “A little bit of Donald is all I need” has perhaps more resonance in the present day than could ever have been imagined back then…

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Martine McCutcheon	I’ve Got You	Nope
2	Shaft	(Mucho Mambo) Sway	Of course not
3	Enrique Iglesias	Bailamos	Nah
4	Shania Twain	Man! I Feel Like A Woman	NEVER!
5	A1	Summertime Of Our Lives	God no!
6	The Offspring	The Kids Aren’t Alright	I did not
7	DJ Jean	The Launch	Just awful – no
8	Lou Bega	Mambo No. 5 (A Little Bit Of…	No

Disclaimer

I make no claim to the rights of this show and all ownership and contents including logos and graphics belongs totally to the BBC or copyright holder(s).

All opinions on the music and artists featured are my own. Sorry if you don’t agree.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002v4qm/top-of-the-pops-10091999

TOTP 03 SEP 1999

Posted on 5 Days Ago by 80stastic

We’re into the second instalment of the peripatetic version of TOTP whilst the BBC’s Elstree Studios are being renovated. This episode was filmed in Event II, Brighton and to reflect the travelling nature of the show at this time, there’s an updated logo with the original one having the words “On Tour” superimposed in the middle of it where “Of The” would normally be. It’s a nice little touch. Gail Porter is our host again and she’s got a smart new angular haircut this week. Thankfully for this blogger, we’re back to the usual eight songs this week as opposed to last week’s bumper edition which had eleven. Only one of those eight have been on the show before though so I best get on with it…

In late Summer/ early Autumn of 1999, the UK went Latin pop music crazy with the likes of Jennifer Lopez and Ricky Martin riding high in our charts. Rather than peter out, the trend variegated and we saw a new strain of the genre dominating the Top 40. I say ‘new’ but it was actually very retro – mambo. No chart was more mambo-fied than this week’s with the top two positions both being of that musical persuasion. We start with the song in the runners up position from Shaft. Nothing to do with the 1971 blaxploitation crime thriller film starring Richard Roundtree nor even the people behind the 1992 Toytown techno hit “Roobarb And Custard”; no, this Shaft were the electronic production duo Alex Rizzo and Elliot Ireland who had done remixes for the likes of Björk and Alison Limerick under the moniker of Skeewiff before changing their name to Shaft and turning their attention to the 1954 hit “Sway” by Dean Martin or rather the Rosemary Clooney version of it. A remix of that recording was used to soundtrack a TV ad for London radio station Kiss FM which led to a demand for the track to be released. There was only one problem – the holders of the copyright to the Clooney version wouldn’t give permission for the release so Rizzo and Ireland drafted in a session singer to re-record it at the death and hey presto!…a massive hit was born.

“Mucho Mambo (Sway)” was a pretty nasty thing, tacky in the extreme that did nothing except destroy the legacy of “Sway”’s previous incarnations but the UK record buying public didn’t give a fig about any of that. As for the staging of this one, it was pretty straightforward I guess what with Mambo music being a high energy genre and involving distinctive dance steps. I’m not sure why they thought Richard Ayoade would be able to pull off those moves though…

The Latin vibe continues with another outing for “Mi Chico Latino” by Geri Halliwell which, despite being deposed from the top of the charts this week is, as Gail Porter points out in her intro, riding high in the charts at No 3. Sticking with the numbers game, I hadn’t picked up on this the first time this performance was broadcast but Geri had surrounded herself on stage with two drummers (Adam Ant style), three Spanish guitar players and five Sun-tanned backing dancers. That seems like a lot of people for such a slight tune – we’re all agreed that it was just a rip-off of Madonna’s “La Isla Bonita” aren’t we? – or maybe that was the point and a distraction was needed.

Geri’s next release would see her engaged in one of the more high profile chart battles of the 90s when her single “Lift Me Up” went head to head with former Spice Girl band mate Emma Bunton who duetted with Tin Tin Out on a cover of Eddie Brickell’s “What I Am” but that’s all for a future post.

One of the most prolific bands of the second half of the 90s next as Ocean Colour Scene clock up their ninth straight hit with “Profit In Peace”. Two thirds of those nine went Top 10 – I know, I was surprised as well. This track was the lead single released from fourth studio album “One From The Modern” and is an anthem for our times, no more so than literally the present day what with the state of the world and the people in charge.

I have two memories about this track neither of which relate to when it was actually in the charts at the time. Firstly, about a year after it had been released, I’m sure it turned up on a promotional CD given away free with a breakfast cereal (can’t remember which one) along with a few other recent past hits though the only one I can recall is “Disco Down” by Shed Seven. In the days before streaming platforms, I played that disc a few times on my portable CD player on my walk to work trying to convince myself that I was still on my way to spend my day in an Our Price store surrounded by music rather than the reality which was being on my way to life as a civil servant at the Land Registry surrounded by paperwork and file plans. The second recollection is seeing Ocean Colour Scene perform the song when I caught them live in an open air gig in Hull in August of 2024 when Embrace and Cast were also on the bill. It was a good gig and yes, I do feel very old.

Still with Another Level?! If I was surprised by the amount of Ocean Colour Scene hits there were, I’m flabbergasted by how many times this lot were in the charts. This was their seventh consecutive hit (including one No 1) in just over 18 months and for this one they’d teamed up with R&B artist TQ of ”Westside” fame. In truth, “Summertime” is a bit of a mess. Somehow it doesn’t seem to scan properly as if the beats can’t accommodate the lyrics. Ah yes, those lyrics – I have no idea what a lot of them mean so I had to google them. Here’s just a few of my findings which I’m not claiming are definitive and if I’ve got them wrong I apologise:

“Damn i think i gotta a hangover
Too much mo? the night before”

Songwriters: Douglas B. Rasheed / Terrance Quaites Summertime lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group

‘mo’: In urban slang it stands for ‘modus operandi’ for example, to describe a person’s known style in dating, working, or socializing (e.g., “His MO is to ghost after two dates”)

“And everybody on the westside is real high off the la la (in the streets)
And we looking for the ta ta cause they pop out when it gets hot (everybody)”

Songwriters: Douglas B. Rasheed / Terrance Quaites Summertime lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group

‘la la’: Urban slang for a fun-loving, carefree girl who lives in the moment and doesn’t take life too seriously. However, “Lala bop” is something different altogether.

‘ta ta’: Probably not surprising in the context of the lyrics above but apparently it means breasts (e.g. “She was wearing a low-cut top that showed off her ta-tas.”)

The staging of it doesn’t help with the initial shot of the group with four backing dancers all in a line shuffling about looks like a very loose rehearsal. Maybe that was the look they were going for to promote the vibe (hate that word!) of the song? Then there’s TQ himself bounding on stage halfway through, all over excited – if Tigger was a rapper….

Not every dance tune around this time was all about Mambo. Here’s Moloko with a huge club anthem but, as with many such hits, it took a remix and a rerelease to secure its high chart position and sales. When “Sing It Back” was originally out to buy in the shops, it was the version from the album “I Am Not A Doctor” which yielded a disappointing peak just outside the Top 40 (No 45 if you’re counting). A remix was sought out by the band and Todd Terry (the man behind Everything But The Girl’s monster anthem “Missing”) was their first choice but, unhappy with his treatment of the track, they turned to Boris Dlugosch and it was his version that became their biggest hit to date when it peaked at No 4. To paraphrase Mel Smith on his 1987 Christmas hit with Kim Wilde, it’s an almighty groove, with an almost Chic like guitar riff and Róisín Murphy’s distinctive, alluring vocals beckoning the listener/audience to join in. I always wondered why it wasn’t called “Bring It Back” as in the first line of the chorus but have since discovered that it was inspired by Róisín’s time spent frequenting the Body And Soul nightclub in New York where the resident DJ would play a lot of tracks with vocals in them and would fade down the volume so the assembled throng of clubbers could literally sing the words back to him. Fairly obvious really. “Sing It Back” would catapult Moloko into a different league of exposure (it was a UK and US Dance No 1) not least due to the track’s ubiquity – it reportedly featured on over 100 compilation albums.

Although Moloko were a duo, Róisín performs completely solo here with no sign of partner Mark Bryson but with all respect to him, nobody noticed due to Róisín’s choice of stage costume. A potentially unforgiving silver catsuit held no fear for her as she looked and sounded like a star with her image topped off with a retro yet stylish Purdey style haircut. If Joanna Lumley had been in Barbarella instead of Jane Fonda, she would surely have looked like the Moloko singer does in this performance. Failing that, if they ever remade Gerry Anderson sci-fi TV series UFO, all Róisín needed to add to her look was a purple wig.

Oh my dear God! What was this?! This was wrong on multiple levels! As well as Mambo fever, 1999 saw a resurgence in ABBA mania. As an appetiser, we’d already had the “Thank ABBA for the Music” medley by Steps, Tina Cousins, Cleopatra, B*Witched and Billie which originated from the BRIT Awards show that year and turned into a No 4 hit. This was quickly followed by the opening of the now legendary ABBA musical Mama Mia! which resulted in the seven year old compilation “ABBA Gold” returning to No 1 in the charts. Now, I have no problem with the Swedish superstars – they were part of my early childhood in our house – but that’s not what I’m referring to. No, what I have a problem with is A*Teens who were a group of Swedish 14-16 year olds put together to record late 90s versions of ABBA hits with the aim of fleecing the world with them. This was a scandalous practice it seemed to me to cash in on the renewed interest in ABBA. Why did anyone need newer versions of those classic pop hits and who thought having them sung by teenage kids was the way to go about it?! I mean, it’s not quite Minipops territory but it was distasteful and unedifying. Somehow though, this poorly thought out project was successful. Their debut single “Mamma Mia” was, rather predictably, the best selling single of 1999 in Sweden and a hit all round Europe (including in the UK where it peaked at No 12). Somewhere, Simon Fuller was sat at home thinking “Hmm. A junior version of S Club 7. That could sell…”

Their success would continue for a couple of years before petering out into the new millennium. In a case of history eating itself, A*Teens reformed this year to compete for the chance to represent Sweden at Eurovision but they finished 7th out of 12 entries in the Melodifestivalen 2026 final to find the ultimate entrant. Mamma Mia indeed! I have to admit that I didn’t get to the end of this one – it was making me feel a bit queasy.

Some proper music now courtesy of Stereophonics who are into their fourth single released from sophomore album “Performance And Cocktails”. “I Wouldn’t Believe Your Radio” was, as Gail Porter regales us in her intro, written by Kelly Jones after having had a dream in which George Harrison and Ringo Starr were singing that title in front of Jones’ parents’ house. So, a bit like John Lennon’s fabricated tale about the origin of the name The Beatles. He famously said that it came to him in a dream in which a man appeared on a flaming pie and said “From this day on you are Beatles with an ‘A’”. Could that story have been lurking around in Kelly Jones’ subconscious which triggered his dream?

Anyway, the song sounds a bit like something Noel Gallagher would have written in the latter period of Oasis and therefore lacks the punch of singles like “The Bartender And The Thief” and “Pick A Part That’s New”. Not a bad track just not one of their best. One final single from the album would follow before the band would return with their second No 1 album “Just Enough Education To Perform” in 2001.

P.S. Is it just me or does Kelly have a look of Robbie Williams about him in this performance?

We end as we began – in Mambo mood. The origins of “Mambo No.5 (A Little Bit Of…)” by Lou Bega stretched back longer than this particular chart. First of all, there’s the fact that it was based on the old Pérez Prado track originally recorded in 1949. Remarkably for an artist that had been dead for 10 years and was associated with one very distinct genre of music, this was the second time in four years that Prado’s presence had been felt in a huge hit after “Guaglione” was a No 2 record in 1995 following its use in a Guinness advert. Fast forward to 1999 and here he was again being used as the structure for Lou Bega’s worldwide No 1 but who was Lou Bega? Well, apart from being a definitive One Hit Wonder in the UK (one chart topper then nothing ever again), he was/is a German singer born to an Italian mother and Ugandan father who discovered Latin music whilst living in Miami. Returning to Munich, he would get involved with a manager and two producers, a collaboration which would lead to “Mambo No.5 (A Little Bit Of)”.

Secondly, there’s the fact that the track had been around for ages before its entry at the top of the chart. Indeed, it had been in the Top 40 for three weeks getting as high as No 31 prior to this point. How so? Well, it was the same story as we saw recently with ATB’s hit “9PM (Till I Come)” which charted on sales of import copies alone ahead of its official UK release. Once said release was made available, the import version was declared null and void for chart compilation purposes and disappeared from view altogether.

So that’s its origin story but was it any good? I don’t think you’ll be surprised to hear that I couldn’t stand it. I just found it hard to appreciate and seemed designed to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Was I being a music snob? Quite probably but I’ve always tried to be honest in my nearly 10 years of writing this blog so I’m not about to stop that with the end now only a handful of posts away. However, I did appreciate this rendition of it in the marvellous The Royle Family:

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Shaft	Mucho Mambo (Sway)	I did not
2	Geri Halliwell	Mi Chico Latino	Nah
3	Ocean Colour Scene	Profit In Peace	No but I had that breakfast cereal promo CD…
4	Another Level / TQ	Summertime	Nope
5	Moloko	Sing It Back	No bui I think my wife may have
6	A*Teens	Mama Mia	NEVER!
7	Stereophonics	I Wouldn’t Believe Your Radio	No but I had the album
8	Lou Bega	Mambo No.5 (A Little Bit Of…)	NO!

Disclaimer

I make no claim to the rights of this show and all ownership and contents including logos and graphics belongs totally to the BBC or copyright holder(s).

All opinions on the music and artists featured are my own. Sorry if you don’t agree.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002vdb6/top-of-the-pops-03091999

TOTP 26 AUG 1999

Posted on 11 Days Ago by 80stastic

Right, the BBC4 TOTP repeats schedule has gone tits up for the second time recently. After the Gouryella controversy a couple of weeks back causing us to miss two reruns of the grand old show, we’ve now just missed three in a row and suddenly find ourselves at the end of August 1999. This, of course, is just one of the consequences of the fall out of the sacking by the BBC of Scott Mills from his Radio 2 Breakfast Show job. It might seem quite minor compared to some of the other repercussions in the fallout from the whole saga but the online TOTP community picked up on it immediately, quickly predicting that any episodes hosted by Mills would now not see the light of day. That the final three shows he presented were consecutive has engineered this huge leap in broadcast dates. So what did we miss? Let’s have a look shall we?

My word that’s slim pickings! There’s at least three (I’m guessing dance acts) that I’ve no idea about at all. Then there’s repeat showings of Ricky Martin and D.J. Jurgen Presents Alice Deejay and that Ronan Keating No 1 from Notting Hill. I can live without all of those. The Groove Armada track is a bit of a classic and I’d have been interested in the Skunk Anansie single but that’s it. Two out of eight for me on that one. How about the following week?

Dear oh dear. It’s worse if that were possible! There’s Ronan again plus repeats of D.J. Jurgen Presents Alice Deejay and Five plus three dance tracks I have zero memory of. Travis? It’s OK but I don’t think it’s one of their better tracks. Basement Jaxx? So possibly two out of eight again. Possibly. The week after?

Well, that’s a bit better. I like that track by The Divine Comedy and Super Furry Animals were always interesting at least. I couldn’t be doing with Bran Van 3000 which I just found annoying (more on that later) and Westlife can do one as well. There a repeat of Travis and I have no interest in Puff Daddy or Mary J. Blige. That leaves Texas and Feeder who were OK I guess. How many’s that? Four out of nine? I’m almost starting to feel grateful to the BBC for their reaction to the whole Scott Mills thing.

All of this lands us at the back end of August 1999 and this episode also requires some explanation. For a start, it’s another of those TOTP on tour shows and once again it comes from Scotland and (once again) it’s presented by “the wee, local lass” (as she describes herself) Gail Porter. The last time the BBC did this was back in May when the show was filmed in Archaos nightclub in Glasgow as part of BBC Music Live 1999. So why were they doing it again? Here’s the ever excellent @TOTPFacts with the answer:

This was the first of eight editions of #TOTP in the Top Of The Pops On Tour series, from The Revolution, Edinburgh. Over the next seven weeks the show would visit Brighton, Nottingham, Sheffield, Liverpool, Newcastle, Birmingham and Swansea before returning to Elstree studio.
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) April 10, 2026

So there you go. To start the tour off, this show was extended to 45 minutes and includes 11 artists. Right, after all that preamble, let’s get to the music and we start with Apollo Four Forty and their ninth of ten hits “Stop The Rock”. Now this lot wouldn’t normally have been my bag and indeed weren’t a lot of the time but you (and I) had to admire their creativity. Having already had hits based around legendary drummer Gene Krupa, a Van Halen guitar riff and a John Williams composed TV theme, here they were turning to the masters of three chord chug-rock Status Quo for their latest smash. “Stop The Rock” takes inspiration from the Quo’s 1974 hit “Caroline” and is quite the noise but noise in a good way – it’s in your face certainly but with a sense of excitement rather than foreboding or discomfort. Apparently, the guy on vocals here is one Ian Hoxley aka Mary Byker of ‘grebo’ band Gaye Bikers On Acid who I do remember though I’m not as familiar with their catalogue as those of other members of that scene like Pop Will Eat Itself and the Wonder Stuff. Though undoubtedly a dance track, it is refreshing to see “Stop The Rock” actually performed by a band with guitars no less and thereby stopping the rot of the usual staged nonsense that accompanied hits of that genre on the show (i.e. female vocalist out front, two nerdy blokes on keyboards and some synchronised backing dancers to give it a whiff of visual appeal).

As mentioned earlier, the last time that TOTP was recorded outside of London it was also in Scotland and as such the BBC made sure that at least two of the bands performing live and in the venue were Scottish. To this end we had Travis play their newest chart offering “Driftwood” and Texas with their latest single “Summer Son”. Except the use of the word ‘latest” was rather disingenuous. Yes, it would become their latest single but not until it was released nearly three months later! I commented in the post for that TOTP in Glasgow from May 1999 that it felt like executive producer Chris Cowey was really trying to shoehorn Texas into the show just to maintain a theme. I’m sure it was all more complicated than that with various talks, meetings and commitments made by the BBC and the band’s’ management team but that’s what it looked like. As I knew there would he another Texas appearance coming for when the single was actually released, I didn’t say too much about “Summer Sun” the song in that first post. As it turned out, the first opportunity to review it was missed when that happened during a Scott Mills hosted show as mentioned earlier. However, they were back on our screens just a week later with the start of the TOTP on Tour series of programmes beginning in Edinburgh. Well, if Cowey could get them on three months before the single was released, he wasn’t going to miss the chance to get them on the show when “Summer Son” was legitimately in the charts was he?

So, the actual song…yeah, it’s OK. As with the rest of the “Hush” album, it didn’t deviate much from the formula that brought them so much success with “White On Blonde” but having waited their whole career for such huge sales, you couldn’t really expect them to throw the blueprint out overnight. The official video that accompanied it featuring Sharleen Spiteri cavorting about with a half dressed bloke in a bed and was considered too provocative for many broadcasters and was certainly never going to be shown on pre-watershed BBC. It’s on YouTube if you want to see what all the fuss was about but it seems very tame by today’s standards.

A quality tune up next and one of the best that the artist behind it ever recorded to my ears. Faced with the prospect of delivering the dreaded ‘difficult third* album’ hurdle, Supergrass made light of the fabled obstacle by trailing it with two quality singles. First came “Pumping On Your Stereo” in the May before following it up with “Moving” which was perhaps even better. The almost acoustic opening was a clever move to intrigue the listener by presenting them with a non-typical Supergrass sound before the funky meat of the track kicked in. I thought it was cleverly constructed though some reviewers criticised it for not being seamless enough in that you could see the joins of the two parts of the track as if it was two different songs superglued together. Personally, I don’t see an issue with that. One of the most lauded songs ever is exactly that. “A Day In The Life” has the Lennon penned “I read the news today” heavy style verses whilst McCartney supplied the more upbeat “Woke up fell out of bed, dragged a comb across my head” middle part and that worked perfectly.

*Is the difficult album the third one or the second? I’m never quite sure.

Talking of working perfectly, “Moving” was used across the ending credits of the marvellously entertaining film East Is East and it was an inspired choice both sonically and visually. My mate Robin attended a premiere for East Is East as his sister is in the film – she played the part of Stella, the blonde girl on the film poster who had designs on Jimi Mistry’s character Tariq. Whilst at the event, Robin met the film’s director Damien O’Donnell and he congratulated him on the movie, especially the music featured in it, highlighting the choice to include “Moving”. Damien had to admit that he’d had very little to do with the music decisions and that’s me being a supergrass, outing a film director’s lack of input to his own film. Well, sort of, alright?

After the established practice of how TOTP staged a dance act in the late 90s was destabilised by Apollo 440 at the top of the show, by the fourth performance in, were already back to the status quo (see what I did there?). Who the deuce were Binary Finary?! Well, I could give you the names of the trio behind this project but frankly who cares? Look them up yourself on Wikipedia if you really must. Their hit was called “1999”…or was it? You see, this trance track had already been a No 24 hit the previous year when it was called…yes…”1998”! Remixed, rereleased and renamed it would go to No 11 the second time around. Binary Finary would pull off this trick of rehashing and retitling again in 2000 but we’d all got bored of it then and it peaked at No 84.

Obviously there was nothing down for me in “1999” but I did note that, in an unusual turn of events, although reverting to the normal staging for a dance act, there were more anonymous blokes behind keyboards on stage than there were female dancers for once (note dancers not vocalists as the track had no lyrics). Oh and that link by Gail Porter about getting tickets to see TOTP on tour? That was all a bit contrived wasn’t it? Nobody was calling the show ‘TOTP 1999’, tour or not – a very clunkily constructed segue and no mistake.

Staying with Gail, she now informs us that although “Bugs” is the second hit by Hepburn, they haven’t actually made it into the TOTP studio yet. She’s right you know as the all female group, just like Texas, also appeared on that BBC Music Live 1999 broadcast from Archaos nightclub in Glasgow back in May which was their debut on the show. They would eventually get to that hallowed ground of the studio of the Beeb’s legendary music show in 2000 to perform their third single “Deep Deep Down”.

Back to “Bugs” though and it was more of that uptempo, pop/rock sound that they gave us with first hit “I Quit”. Although a polished production, it was designed to sound a bit more kick ass than something like “Truly Madly Deeply” by Savage Garden hence the almost “Smells Like Teen Spirit” intro before it morphs into something you could imagine The Rembrandts releasing. In fact, just like “I’ll Be There For You” being the theme to Friends, Hepburn did appear on the soundtrack to an American TV series – not a comedy what with the “Don’t want to die like bugs on the windshield” line but Buffy The Vampire Slayer which made a bit more sense. Maybe.

As a little footnote, do you think their rivals in the all female guitar based band stakes – Thunderbugs – were pleased or pissed off at the title of this Hepburn hit? Pleased with the potential spin off publicity or pissed off for partly nicking their name?

Similar to Supergrass earlier, TLC were on to their third studio album as the end of the 90s beckoned and also like Supergrass, the first two singles released from it (“Fanmail”) would garner a reputation as some of their finest work for many people. Following long term chart dweller “No Scrubs” was never going to be easy but with “Unpretty”, they made a beautiful job of it. A second consecutive US No 1, it would also consolidate their success over here by peaking at No 6. To maintain the Supergrass comparison, “Unpretty” also had an almost acoustic feel to it which actually made for a much more mainstream sound and was an ocean away from the likes of hip hop debut hit “Ain’t 2 Proud 2 Beg”. This was almost an orthodox rock/pop song.

Based around a poem written by Tionne “T-Boz” Watkins about her incandescent reaction to men calling women “fat pigs” on an episode of Ricki Lake, it would go on to receive two Grammy nominations. As for this ‘exclusive’ performance, it was clearly recorded in an empty room judging by the fact that there’s no cutaway shots to any studio audience members. Well, I guess you can’t get any more exclusive than having nobody there.

When in Edinburgh…Chris Cowey doubles down (literally) on the Scottishness of this show by having Texas perform a second song for no other discernible reason other than than that they are, indeed, Scottish and…well…there. “Tell Me The Answer” is the second track from their fifth studio album “The Hush” and listening to it, you can kind of understand why it was never released as a single. It’s got a nice enough if unoriginal sound to it but it seems like it’s in the wrong key for Sharleen’s voice to me judging by her almost falsetto vocals in this acoustic (there’s that word again) version. It’s not just me is it? Is she struggling to make those notes? Normally her voice is pretty on point but not here.

“The Hush” became their second No 1 album of three (if you include their Greatest Hits collection from 2000) and would spend 12 non-consecutive weeks inside the Top 10 going three times platinum in the UK. It was at No 4 in the charts at the time of this TOTP.

So despite the Scott Mills induced skipping of three episodes which meant that I was spared two appearances of D.J. Jurgen Presents Deejay Alice, I’m not away scott free as here they are again for a fourth time on the show with “Better Off Alone”. Hell’s teeth! In fairness to Cowey on this one, it did spend nearly two months inside the Top 10 including three consecutive weeks at No 2. For this performance, they’ve dropped the…erm…more elderly lady on the keyboards who appeared on the 30th of July show so we left with the trio of vocalist and two backing dancers only.

Now, I have tried to go forensic on this one and I really think that one of the dancers is not the same person who performed in that previous show. In fact, it didn’t require that much detailed investigation as the singer and other dancer are both wearing the same clothes whereas the new woman has a totally different outfit to the girl in that 30th July episode. I’m not sure what any of this means other than to suggest such dance hits were all about the beats and not the visuals.

Just like Texas, Supergrass are allowed to perform two songs in this specially extended TOTP and they give us the track “Mary” which would become the next single released from their third, eponymous album. Unlike the other two singles, it would underperform significantly chart-wise peaking at No 36. There are reasons for this I think. Firstly, is the fact that the album had already been in the shops for two months by the time “Mary” was released so that could well have diluted potential sales. Secondly, its promo video, an homage to Hammer Horror movies, was considered too scary for broadcast (also like Texas) and had to be heavily edited with the offending scenes replaced with, bizarrely, pictures of onions. All those shenanigans can’t have helped the single’s promotion. Thirdly, and most significantly I feel, although it’s a great track, it was a strange choice as a single. Nowhere near as radio friendly as its two predecessors, it’s definitely more of an album track to my ears with its “Ah-ya-ya” shouted chorus and heavy guitars. “Mary” would be the last hit of the 90s for Supergrass, drawing a rather unsatisfactory line under that era of their career.

P.S. “Mary” would provide lyrics that seemed to be the reverse of the band’s biggest hit “Alright”. Look at these lines:

“I like to push you over into my stream
I like to point out that her teeth are green”

Songwriters: Michael Quinn / Gareth Coombes / Robert Coombes / Daniel Robert Goffey

Mary lyrics © Bmg Rights Management (uk) Ltd.

“Teeth are green”! I thought Supergrass kept their teeth nice and clean!

A classic one hit wonder next…or were they? The chart record of Bran Van 3000 (or “Bread Van 3000” as Mark and Lard used to call them) presents an unusual question – can you be a one hit wonder if you’ve had two hits but both said hits were with the same song? It’s a conundrum for sure. Anyway, here are the facts about “Drinking In L.A.”; make your own mind up:

Released June 1998 – peaked at No 34
Released August 1999 – peaked at No 3
No other UK Top 40 hits

What d’ya reckon then? One hit wonder or not? I guess there’s no right answer just as there’s no definitive opinion as to whether “Drinking In L.A.” was any good or not what with musical taste being subjective and all that. For what it’s worth, here’s my thoughts on both questions:

Yes, they are a one hit wonder because they only have one song that anybody (except superfans) know them for.
I really didn’t like “Drinking In L.A.” for quite a niche reason.

Ah, so what was that niche reason you ask? Well, it was one tiny element of the track that only lasted about two seconds and that was the spoken word intro that says “Hi, my name’s Stereo Mike”. For some reason, that little snippet used to annoy the hell out of me. There was plenty about chart music in 1999 to be offended by but those five words used to wind me up something rotten. When I made the mistake of letting my colleagues at the Our Price I was working in know this, they used to put “Drinking In L.A.” on the shop stereo and keep pressing the play button constantly so that “Hi, my name’s Stereo Mike” would sound on repeat. I still can’t get past that intro.

If I could, what would I say about the rest of the song? Probably that it was a bit of a slacker anthem similar to “Loser” by Beck which possibly contributed to its popularity but that the real reason for its ascent up the charts second time around was this advert:

Oh and that has there ever been another hit in UK chart history that features the word ‘bupkis’?

After all the hype and expectation and then anti-climax surrounding the release of Geri Halliwell’s debut solo single “Look At Me”, there presumably was some anxiety lurking in the offices of Geri’s management team and record company. The next single had to be bigger which meant topping the chart. Despite those aforementioned representatives of Halliwell wanting “Lift Me Up” or “Bag It Up” to be the next release, it was “Mi Chico Latino” that made the cut and, lo and behold, it flamenco-ed its way straight to No 1.

Now let’s address the two elephants in the room straightaway – was this just a rewrite of “La Isla Bonita” by Madonna from her 1986 album “True Blue” and was Geri just jumping on the Latin pop phenomenon of the time? ‘Yes’ and ‘possibly’ would be my answers to those questions. There’s no doubt about the first one but in Geri’s defence re: the second, she reckons she wrote it the previous year before the Latin pop trend really took off in 1999. Who am I to give a definitive verdict on that? What I can say is that her lyrics for this one seem to be a little confused. Whilst there is heavy usage of Spanish throughout like “Donde esta el hombre con fuego en la sangre” and “Donde esta mi chico latino” and a whole middle eight in that language (supposedly to pay homage to Geri’s Spanish mother), there is also the lyric “Find my love my dolce vita” which features four times. “Dolce Vita” is Italian not Spanish surely?

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Apollo Four Forty	Stop The Rock	I did not
2	Texas	Summer Son	Didn’t happen
3	Supergrass	Moving	No but I had the album
4	Binary Finary	1999	It was hardly Prince was it? No
5	Hepburn	Bugs	Negative
6	TLC	Unpretty	Nope
7	Texas	Tell Me The Answer	N/A
8	D.J. Jurgen Presents Deejay Alice	Better Off Alone	Big no
9	Supergrass	Mary	See 3 above
10	Bran Van 3000	Drinking In L.A.	Couldn’t get past that intro – no
11	Geri Halliwell	Mi Chico Latino	Nah

Disclaimer

I make no claim to the rights of this show and all ownership and contents including logos and graphics belongs totally to the BBC or copyright holder(s).

All opinions on the music and artists featured are my own. Sorry if you don’t agree

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p00fsvhp/top-of-the-pops-26081999

TOTP 30 JUL 1999

Posted on 14 Days Ago by 80stastic

Of the eight acts in this particular TOTP’s running order, it could be claimed that three were the equivalent of elder statesmen compared to their young upstart chart counterparts. They’d probably be described as ‘heritage’ acts today or, if they were football supporters then “legacy’ fans. Back in 1999, individually they might have been defined as ‘making a comeback’, ‘having an unexpected hit’ and ‘business as usual’. Who am I talking about? Let’s find out…

Our host is Jayne Middlemiss and we start with the artist having an unexpected hit. Up to this point in the 90s, Elvis Costello had only had one Top 40 hit throughout the whole decade – 1994’s “Sulky Girl” which made No 22. It wasn’t much of a return given that, in that period, he’d released three studio albums under his own name, one with The Attractions, a soundtrack, a collaboration with Burt Bacharach and a one off project with The Brodsky Quartet. To be fair to Costello, as far as I can tell, that album haul only resulted in ten singles being released but even so, a 90% failure rate for making the Top 40 seems like a very big number. Maybe his fanbase just weren’t that interested in buying singles – all of those albums listed above charted with two even going Top 5 so their was definitely still an appetite for his work just not the bite size versions.

Anyway, suddenly Elvis had a Top 20 single (his first for 16 years and, so far, his last) with a cover version of “She”, the 1974 No 1 from French/Armenian singer Charles Aznavour. Taken from the soundtrack to Notting Hill, both the original and Costello’s cover featured in the film. Bizarrely though, in the US release, only Elvis’s take on it was used as American test audiences didn’t react well to the Aznavour version. Maybe it wasn’t such an outlandish decision after all though as Costello’s vocal is just about perfect for the song, as if he was born to sing it. For many people, especially those not familiar with the original, his might even be considered the definitive version. In Japan for example, it is an absolute highlight of his live concerts.

The performance here was the first time Elvis has been on the show for five years and, aside from a replay showing of “Oliver’s Army” in a 2005 episode (for some reason), it remains his last. Although it’s a great version, it somehow seems a shame that Costello’s last hit and TOTP appearance were all about a cover rather than one of his original compositions.

Despite being a well established boy band with a string of hit singles and an adoring, teenage girl fanbase behind them, Five were still lacking that one thing that would put them up there with the likes of Take That and Boyzone – a No 1 single. Yes, their debut album had topped the charts but to cement them in the consciousness of the general public, they needed the profile that a cut-through-to-the-mainstream, instantly recognisable hit could bring them. Take That had, amongst others, “Back For Good” and Boyzone had “No Matter What”. Could “If Ya Gettin’ Down” do the same for Five? Not quite. It would debut and peak at No 2 meaning their last three singles had missed the top spot by a single place. They should have changed their name to Two.

As with the first of those No 2s “Everybody Get Up”, “If Ya Gettin’ Down” (make your minds up lads, up or down?) was based around a hit from the 80s. Whilst the former utilised Joan Jett And The Blackhearts’ version of “ I Love Rock ‘N’ Roll”, the latter sampled Indeep’s “Last Night A D.J. Saved My Life”. It worked pretty well to be fair but couldn’t hope to match the explosive power of “Everybody Get Up” which I’d actually rather enjoyed. That had featured Abz and J at the forefront what with all the rapping in it and it was a similar story with “If Ya Gettin’ Down”. With the slower tracks, Richie and Scott did the vocal heavy lifting. I’m not entirely sure what Sean did. Was he just there to do some dancing? If so, they clearly didn’t trust him even with just that judging by the battalion of backing dancers up there on stage with the band.

Five would finally get their No 1 with their next single release “Keep On Movin’”, the first of three chart toppers with the other two being a collaboration with Queen on a rendition of their anthem “We Will Rock You” and a track called “Let’s Dance” which thankfully wasn’t a David Bowie cover.

WHO??! The 3 Jays?! No, I’ve got nothing, zilch, zero, nada so I googled their name. Top result? A pub in Clacton. Says it all really. Or does it? After a bit more searching, I found out that the guys behind The 3 Jays (Jamie White, Jim Lee and Jeff Patterson – the three ‘J’s – geddit?) were also variously involved in the following chart hits:

Jeremy Healy & Amos – “Stamp!” – No 11 – 1996
PF Project – “Choose Life” – No 6 – 1997
Tzant – “Sounds of Wickedness” – No 11 – 1998
Mirrorball – “Given Up” – No 12 – 1999

Hmm. So maybe there was more to them than I first thought. Actually, maybe not as “Feeling It Too” sounded like it was just jumping on the sonic bandwagon that was popularised by Phats & Small and indeed, there was a remix by that pair of “Feeling It Too” available on the single.

Now, there was an 80s band called The Three Johns that my mate Robin liked who were nothing like the The 3 Jays being, as they were, a post-punk, indie rock band with politically charged, anti-Thatcher/anti far right lyrics. I’m betting they never did or would play that pub in Clacton whose MP, of course, is one Nigel Farage.

Next, that elder statesman act for whom another hit was just ‘business as usual’. How many albums do you reckon the Pet Shop Boys have released in their career? I’m just talking studio albums not Best Ofs or Remix compilations. Fifteen is the answer over a 40 year career. That’s one every two and a half years or so. That sounds, if not prolific then exceptionally consistent. A deeper dive into their discography (their actual discography and not their first ever Best Of from 1991) shows though that the first four came between 1986 and 1990 – just about one a year which is prolific I would argue. After that initial burst of youthful creativity, they settled down to a fairly regular release schedule of a studio album every three years. To this end, by 1999, “Nightlife” was released three years after their last album “Bilingual” which in turn came out three years after “Very” which was preceded by “Behaviour” three years earlier.

So what?” you may ask. It’s a valid question. Other than peaking my fascination with sequences (a run of football results has a similar effect on me), I’m not sure why I went down that route. Oh, hang on, yes I do. It was to provide some context as to my personal engagement with the output of Neil and Chris. Having been a fan throughout the 80s and early 90s, by the end of that decade I was entering “meh” territory. Sadly, “I Don’t Know What You Want But I Can’t Give It Any More” wasn’t going to reactivate my interest. It’s not that it’s a terrible song (though its title does nearly enter terrible territory) it’s just that it was…well…yes, a bit “meh” really. It had all the components we’d come to expect from a Pet Shop Boys release but it doesn’t have enough about it to take its place aside some of the duo’s classic singles. As such, I would argue that it really isn’t one of them.

My affection for the Pet Shop Boys was reignited when I saw them live on their Dreamworld: The Greatest Hits Live tour a couple of years ago. I still can’t remember if they performed “I Don’t Know What You Want But I Can’t Give It Any More” though. Oh and I can’t not mention the backing dancers here. As with Five earlier, there’s loads of them but their number isn’t what requires comment. What was with all the juddering, arms-by-their-sides moves that made them look like fish literally out of water gaping for breath? Was it somehow linked to Chris and Neil’s onstage garb? The punk styled hair and shades look would also be used in the artwork for the album but what really grabs the attention is that they somehow invented the ‘slugs’ eyebrow phenomenon a good 20 years before it actually became a thing.

The 90s saw the UK record buying public display an insatiable appetite for Eurodance music. The charts were absolutely full of it meaning that yours truly has spent hours writing about a style of music I couldn’t really be doing with. At all. Throughout the decade artists such as Snap!, 2 Unlimited, Culture Beat, Haddaway, Corona, Ace Of Base and Dr. Alban had huge hits including No 1s (four of those names scored a chart topper!). And those were acts were just off the top of my head. I bet a deep dive of the internet would reveal many more…

*does a deep dive of the internet for Eurodance artists*

…Cappella, N-Trance, Real McCoy, Rednex, Sash!, T-Spoon, Vengaboys, Whigfield…oh God, I feel nauseous knowing how much of my life I’ve wasted commenting on all the above.

Yes! It’s a blogger epiphany! I’m not going to spend any more time in this blog on anymore Eurodance nonsense! Away with you….

…..oh, I just can’t can I? Bloody hell!! Right, D.J. Jurgen Presents Alice Deejay…so, this was a Dutch Eurodance project which, despite Jayne Middlemiss’s protestations, did have some DJs in it and was fronted by one Judith Anna Pronk. Their biggest hit of five was this one – “Better Off Alone” – which has accrued quite the retrospective legacy. For example, in March 2025, Billboard magazine ranked it as No 48 in their list of ‘The 100 Best Dance Songs of All Time’. At the risk of sounding like my Dad when I myself was a teenager, it sounds like all those other Eurodance acts to my ears. And yes, I know Eurodance is a generic term and that there must have been loads of sub genres within it so to lump them all together is probably lazy but I really couldn’t care less.

As for this performance, there really was only two things that I noted about it. Firstly, and this is going to sound awful for which I apologise in advance but the lady at the back on the raised stage behind a keyboard (it actually looks a bit like an ironing board on first view), is it me or does she look a bit old to be a part of this nonsense? Secondly, and I’m certainly not complaining, but why did we only get 1:40 of the track which Wikipedia tells me the radio edit was 2:56 in length?

Definitely on the comeback trail are Madness who are making a second consecutive appearance to perform “Lovestruck”, their first new material single for thirteen years. I’m guessing this might be another of those double recording montages like we saw by Cher recently where the artist did two performances in the same one visit to the TOTP studio which are differentiated by a change of outfits just to convince the TV audience that they were recorded at least seven days apart. We know this as in last week’s performance Lee Thompson had a Bernie Clifton style jockey outfit on but this week he’s donned a…well…Jayne Middlemiss says it’s a worm costume but is it? It’s a bit green looking for a worm? A caterpillar maybe? Anyway, the abrupt cut away from our host to the performance is the conclusive piece of evidence for me that this was a second performance recorded in one sitting.

Suggs, of course, is a well known fellow fan of my beloved Chelsea even singing on the club’s 1997 FA Cup final song “Blue Day”. He nearly got sacked from the group in their early days for constantly missing Saturday afternoon band practice to go to Stamford Bridge to watch his team. I mention all of this because of the use of the word “Tottenham” in the lyrics. With Spurs being one of our fiercest rivals, I wonder how Suggs felt about singing those lines all these years? In fact, I wonder if he feels similar to another celebrity Chelsea fan who even refused to say the name ‘Tottenham’ in a recent Graham Norton interview? His reply to Graham’s question clearly riled another Graham…

Prick. pic.twitter.com/rAmbLkWBtE
— Graham Kingsbury (@grayjam68) February 13, 2026

Next up is one of the most pointless personal messages recorded by an artist for TOTP. The Chemical Brothers appear on screen to say this:

“Hi, we’re The Chemical Brothers…Sorry we can’t be there. Here’s some footage of us playing live in Red Rocks…Denver”

What was the point of that?! We then get said footage of them performing “Hey Boy Hey Girl” live in Red Rocks, Denver mixed in with shots of the TOTP audience dancing to it as it’s relayed on a big screen back in the studio. Again I say, “What was the point of that?!” Whatever you thought you were doing as executive producer Chris Cowey, it wasn’t working.

Despite the attempts by Five to put her off, Jayne Middlemiss just about gets through her intro to the No 1 which is Ricky Martin with “Livin’ la Vida Loca” for the third week which was quite the achievement in 1999 which saw many a one week chart topper. Perhaps even more impressive though was the fact that Martin became the first Puerto Rican artist in history to hit No 1 in the UK. It would go double platinum over here making it our sixth best selling single of the year. Also “Livin’ the Crazy Life” is another Ricky Martin who was the winner of the eighth series of The Apprentice in 2012. The show’s BBC website says of Ricky:

“By day Ricky is a successful recruitment manager operating across the UK science industries, and by night and weekend a heavy hitting professional wrestler”

Wow! If he doesn’t use “Livin’ la Vida Loca” as his entrance music he isn’t doing it right.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Elvis Costello	She	Yes I did for my wife who’s a big Elvis Costello fan
2	Five	If Ya Gettin’ Down	No thanks
3	The 3 Jays	Feeling It Too	Negative
4	Pet Shop Boys	I Don’t Know What You Want But I Can’t Give It Any More	Nah
5	D.J. Jurgen Presents Alice Deejay	Better Off Alone	Certainly not
6	Madness	Lovestruck	No
7	The Chemical Brothers	Hey Boy Hey Girl	Nope
8	Ricky Martin	Livin’ la Vida Loca	I did not

Disclaimer

I make no claim to the rights of this show and all ownership and contents including logos and graphics belongs totally to the BBC or copyright holder(s).

All opinions on the music and artists featured are my own. Sorry if you don’t agree

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002tl5r/top-of-the-pops-30071999

TOTP 23 JUL 1999

Posted on 18 Days Ago by 80stastic

What’s going on here then. Why have we missed two episodes? This hasn’t happened since the Summer of 1997 repeats and that whole Puff Daddy/ P Diddy business. The ever reliable @TOTPFacts has the answer:

BBC Four are skipping the 9 and 16 July 1999 editions of #TOTP due to a racial caricature. Selected highlights follow.
What that’s all about? it’s included in this video for a track by Dutch trance act Gouryella, featured in the chart rundowns: https://t.co/dHLYEk44yr
— Top Of The Pops Facts (@TOTPFacts) April 3, 2026

Well, there you go. Some in the online TOTP community were disgruntled at the decision by the BBC with the usual “couldn’t they have blurred it out?” comments and I understand their opinion especially as the Gouryella track was only featured during the chart rundown and not as a standalone showing of the video. Looking at the running order for these two missed episodes though, I can’t say I’m that disappointed not to have watched (and reviewed) some of the hits we missed. Look at this line up from the 9th July episode:

*The unofficial home of TOTP website: https://totparchive.co.uk/episode.php?id=1842*

I would say that there’s only Blur’s “Coffee & TV” and “Secret Smile” by Semisonic that piqued my interest and I certainly had no desire to review S Club 7 and Shania Twain again and I could live without Lolly as well. As for the 16th July episode…

*The unofficial home of TOTP website: https://totparchive.co.uk/episode.php?id=1843*

Manic Street Preachers? I can’t see much else. Well, I haven’t got it in me to dig out those shows on YouTube and review them I’m afraid (especially after seeing the running orders) so it’s full steam ahead with the 23rd July episode which is hosted by Jayne Middlemiss and we start with a new one from Steps called “Love’s Got A Hold On My Heart”. After the almost novelty record debut of “5,6,7,8” and the faux ABBA schtick of their next two releases, their cover of “Tragedy” drew a line in the sand where the group had to taken seriously as a genuine chart entity when it finally made it to No 1 after an ascent that took weeks. The follow up “Better Best Forgotten” leapt to No 2 and so when “Love’s Got A Hold On My Heart” was released as the lead track from second album “Steptacular”, its peak of No 2 was maybe the least that was expected of it. However…talk about playing it safe. Co-produced and co-written by Pete Waterman, this was just a retread of his PWL pomp. You could imagine Sonia (definitely not Kylie though) having recorded this tripe. Everything from its title to its sound was telegraphed. There was nothing new nor original here but maybe it was expecting too much for it to have been anything else.

As for the performance we see here, there’s something curious going on. At the end of the 2nd July show, as Gail Porter introduces the No 1 surrounded by the studio audience, front and centre in the crowd are Steps in the yellow outfits they wore in this, the 23rd July episode. Claire even has the same cowboy hat on. Yet more evidence that there was clearly a time delay between when performances were recorded and when they were broadcast. I assume that the artists had busy schedules and so everything had to be carefully timetabled to accommodate a TOTP studio appearance rather than just show the single’s promo video which executive producer Chris Cowey was very determined not to if he could help it.

Look at this! Madness were back! Had they actually been away though? OK, some clarification is required here. After initially disbanding in 1986, there had already been a number of returns by the nutty boys before this point. In 1988, four members of the original band reunited as The Madness and released one album and two singles none of which troubled the chart compilers. Two years on and now down to two original members, The Nutty Boys were formed before changing their name to Crunch! but there really was no appetite for just the pips of the band and they were soon compost. Everything changed though in 1992 when all seven members came back together to promote the Best Of compilation “Divine Madness” and to play the Madstock! festival in Finsbury Park to 75,000 people over two days. Legend has it that some nearby tower blocks perceptibly shook so loud was the music. Madness were officially a smash again with “Divine Madness” going to No 1 and triple platinum in the UK. Four singles were released from it three of which charted Meanwhile, Madstock was repeated three times as a biannual event.

So, why would I say that Madness were suddenly back in 1999? Ah well, this was the first time that they had released new material since that break up in 1986 when “(Waiting For) The Ghost Train” made No 18. “Lovestruck” was the lead single from “Wonderful”, their first studio album since 1985’s “Mad Not Mad” and listening back to it now, it could easily have been released in the 80s. It was trademark Madness with Mike Barson’s tinkling keyboards back in the fold for the first time since his departure in 1984. Despite sticking out in a 1999 Top 40 like a pork pie hat at Royal Ascot, “Lovestruck” returned Madness to the Top 10 for the first time since “The Sun And The Rain” in 1983. There were a lot of ‘first since’ milestones going on in this comeback!

I’m (love) struck by the unique singing style of Suggs on this track. It’s verges on non-singing which I guess you would almost describe as ‘speaking’ and yet it has served him and his band well for nearly 50 years now. Is it heresy to say that secondary vocalist Chas Smash had the better voice? Certainly, I can hear his harmonies to good effect in this one. “Wonderful” sold reasonably rather than exceptionally well but enough for the band to remain a part of our lives ever since releasing a further five studio albums since and being an almost ever present touring outfit. Embrace the madness!

Some anti-London sentiment now according to Jayne Middlemiss who plays up to her North East roots in her intro to “Londinium” by Catatonia by saying “I dirrn’t knaa wot she’s on aboot like” – they could almost be the words in a speech bubble coming from the mouth of Viz’s Sid The Sexist. Anyway, it’s another regional accent that takes over proceedings next as Cerys Matthews leads us through the second single from “Equally Cursed And Blessed” and although it’s not as immediate as their biggest hits like “Mulder And Scully” and “Road Rage”, it does have some ear worm like qualities that are apparent after a couple of listens. It’s Cerys who you can’t take your eyes off in this performance though as she twists and turns both vocally and physically, bewitching us as she playfully rolls those ‘R’s’ again. Apparently, the band didn’t want “Londinium” released as it could be perceived as negative and wanted “Karaoke Queen” issues instead. That track would become the third single and peaked at No 36 whilst “Londinium” debuted at No 20. Bizarrely though “Karaoke Queen” was not included in the band’s five CD box set “Make Hay Not War – The Blanco Y Negro Years” which brought together their four studio albums when it was released in 2023. Strange glue indeed.

Right, what’s this nonsense? Well, it’s dance nonsense, of course it is and this time it’s delivered to us courtesy of Yolanda (aka DJ Paul Masterson) who took a sample from Liquid Gold’s disco hit “Dance Yourself Dizzy” and turned it into the horrendous mess called “Synths And Strings”. I mean, you can just about hear that No 5 hit from 1980 buried in the mix somewhere but the noise surrounding it is like being slapped across the face constantly. And what was with the staging of this performance with the dancers dressed as toy soldiers? It’s like Trumpton meets Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and to paraphrase Neil Tennant, literally set to a disco beat. Then there there’s a wobbly screen effect laid over the top of it all presumably to replicate the feeling of being off your head in a club. If I could paraphrase again, channelling my inner Queen of Hearts, “Off with their heads!”

There was a third single off the “Gran Turismo” album? That’s what Jayne Middlemiss says in her intro to The Cardigans and she’s right as they are in the studio to perform “Hanging Around”. I remember “My Favourite Game” and “Erase/Rewind” but this one has escaped my memory banks. As with Catatonia earlier, it wasn’t as striking as those two songs or indeed “Lovefool” but unlike Catatonia, it didn’t stay with me for that long after I’d listened to it. Possibly more of a serviceable album track than a single? I mean, next to Yolanda it was like ambrosia from the gods but compared to their own work, it was more semolina than a rich, rice pudding. Erm…not sure where I’m going with this…so I think I’ll move on. No hanging around for me.

Wait, Dina Carroll was still having hits in 1999? In my head she was all about 1992/93 but here she was at the end of the decade at No 13 with “Without Love”. I have written loads about Dina in past posts on account of all those hits back then so I’m not going to retread her entire career story now but suffice to say that at this point, she was undertaking something of a relaunch some three years after her second album “Only Human”. Dina had suffered health problems in the form of a hereditary bone disease that affected her ears – not good if you’re a singer – which had disrupted the recording of that sophomore collection and also the promotion of it. Despite only releasing two singles from it, her record label Mercury decided that work should begin on her third album. It would never be released and we were left with just two singles that would end up as stand alone tracks – mid tempo ballad “One, Two, Three” which never made it into TOTP despite its chart peak of No 16 and this one, “Without Love”.

A definite throwback to her early dance hits, it could have easily been released in 1993 although it came with lots of different mixes to appeal to the various dance markets. Despite its success, the confident performance by Dina here (her final TOTP appearance) and her new image, it would not be enough to convince Mercury to release that third album. One minor hit single would follow in 2001 (a cover of Van Morrison’s “Someone Like You”) and that was that for Dina’s discography and, unless something changes in the future, her whole musical career.

There was no denying it, Destiny’s Child were fulfilling what many had predicted was their (ahem) destiny by starting to rack up some seriously big hits by this point in their career. After “No, No, No” had been an American No 3 hit and gone Top 5 over here, “Bills, Bills, Bills” (they had a thing for repeated three word titles early on) would give them their first US chart topper and a consolidating No 6 hit in the UK. It wouldn’t be long before we were on exactly the same page as our American counterparts with consecutive No 1 singles in “Independent Women” and “Survivor”. I’m getting ahead of myself though. Back to “Bills, Bills, Bills” and many comparisons were made at the time between it and the recent TLC hit “No Scrubs” both lyrically and sonically. There was a solid reason for this which was that both tracks were co-written and produced by Kevin “She’kspere” Briggs and his then girlfriend and former Xscape singer Kandi Burruss. Both songs took the subject matter of denigrating men that were seen as wasters and ran with it and both even used the same slang insult of a ‘scrub’ in their lyrics. Whilst it’s true both employed a sort of skittering backbeat and distinctive synthesised intros, for me, “Bills, Bills, Bills” had more of an En Vogue feel to it than a TLC one. Still, what do I know? I’m hardly an authority on R&B, all female groups of the 90s. I’m a pop kid from the 80s at heart.

What I do know from watching this performance back though is that the TOTP studio audience didn’t seem to know how to dance to this one at all. There’s some collective shuffling about with one poor girl just stood there at the front of the throng, perhaps paralysed by the thought that any dance moves she attempted would be seen on national TV. Just a few people down the line however, one single girl took the exact opposite approach, seized the moment and went for it with arms and hips swaying in unison. Again, I didn’t know anything much about being a young woman in the late 90s but if I’d been in that audience, I’m pretty sure I’d have been the girl stood motionless.

Ah, who could forget “Livin’ La Vida Loca” by Ricky Martin? What’s that? You wish you could forget it? Ouch! Although this No 1 felt like it was a new pop sensation the type of which we hadn’t seen before, we actually had. Gloria Estefan (with and without the Miami Sound Machine) had been having upbeat, Latin flavoured pop hits since 1984. However, it is true that there was a whole legion of super successful Latin artists who had never broken through in the UK like Ricky Martin had managed to do. Sure, he’s had a couple of hits a few years earlier over here but a No 1 record took him to another level (no, not them!). What was it then about “Livin’ La Vida Loca” that enraptured the British record buying public so? Well, the track fair galloped along with a cracking pace which you couldn’t ignore and also had a bit of surf guitar thrown in there which always makes for an engaging sound. Then there was Ricky himself – with his smouldering good looks and gyrating hips he was the perfect vehicle to sell it. And sell it he did with over three quarter of a million physical copies sold in 1999 in the UK alone. It would be the sixth best selling single of the year here.

Ricky Martin’s success could be seen as paving the way for a wave of Latin artists as the new millennium dawned with the likes of Enriquez Iglesias, Shakira, and Christina Aguilera joining him in attaining mainstream chart success without forgetting Jennifer Lopez who was also riding high in the charts at this time*.

*Indeed, it was Lopez’s “If You Had My Love” that replaced “Livin’ La Vida Loca” at the top of the US Billboard chart.

One thing though, Ricky dancing on a podium is giving me strong vibes of Xanadu nightclub in Rochdale that I found myself in one memorable evening out (it’s a long story) which I’m not especially keen to recall.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Steps	Love’s Got A Hold On My Heart	Certainly not
2	Madness	Lovestruck	Nope
3	Catatonia	Londinium	Decent tune but no
4	Yolanda	Synths And Strings	Never
5	The Cardigans	Hanging Around	Negative
6	Dina Carroll	Without Love	I did not
7	Destiny’s Child	Bills, Bills, Bills	Nah
8	Ricky Martin	Livin’ La Vida Loca	No

Disclaimer

I make no claim to the rights of this show and all ownership and contents including logos and graphics belongs totally to the BBC or copyright holder(s).

All opinions on the music and artists featured are my own. Sorry if you don’t agree

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002tl5p/top-of-the-pops-23071999

TOTP 02 JUL 1999

Posted on 21 Days Ago by 80stastic

We’re halfway through these BBC4 1999 TOTP repeats which means I’m officially in the home straight with this blog which will end with the 90s and there will be no TOTP Rewind the 2000s. Also coming to an end back in 1999 was my time working for Our Price. Having started with the company in October 1990, I now had less than a year left before I would leave. I recently posted a photo of myself taken outside the store in Altrincham around this time and with me in that photo was my manager Pete whom I’ve not referred to before. Pete came in to replace Scott who had been so important in my rehabilitation back into work after a significant amount of time out when I was struggling with my mental health. I’d not worked with Pete before so I was probably a bit concerned when Scott was moved on to the Piccadilly shop in Manchester. I shouldn’t have worried as Pete was great albeit in very different ways to Scott. He was an absolute dynamo, always busy doing something, probably because he was a sugar junkie – Pete would think nothing of having a packet of Tunnocks Teacakes for his lunch. He was also not the best observer of Health and Safety regulations. I recall doing an induction for a Xmas Temp and had literally just told them about never standing on a swivel chair to reach for anything high up and Pete came into the stockroom and reached for something high up on a swivel chair! I once locked him in the shop by mistake after taking both his and my keys home. This was before we all had mobile phones and so I got all the way home to Manchester where I found my answer machine full of messages from a stranded Pete asking me to come back and let him out. He took it in good humour though and we went to the pub afterwards to watch the footy. Pete would be my 14th and final manager before I left both Our Price and Manchester for a job in the Civil Service at York.

You’re not here for recollections about my work life though so let’s get to the music. There are only seven artists on tonight as opposed to the usual eight but having checked, that appears to be the original figure when first broadcast and not due to any revised editing decision. Gail Porter is in the host hot seat and we start with last week’s No 1. This practice of having the previous week’s chart topper raise the curtain on the following week’s show despite having been toppled from their throne was becoming a regular feature. Previously, we had S Club 7, this time it’s the Vengaboys with “Boom Boom Boom Boom”. I get that it was a method of combatting the extreme fluctuations of the very top of the charts otherwise these big selling hits would only get one TOTP appearance but it made for an odd spectacle for those of us who grew up in the 70s and 80s watching the show. We just get a repeat of the performance from seven days prior in this one and as such, I have nothing more to say about this absolute pile of crud.

Instead, I think I’ll comment on the profuse usage of the word ‘boom’ in pop and rock music because the Vengaboys sure weren’t the first to coin it. Going back to 1962 there was “Boom Boom” by legendary US blues artist John Lee Hooker whilst the 70s brought us The Boomtown Rats. Into the 80s, the word seemed to be attached to bands and songs that didn’t achieve the same level of success. “Iko Iko” hitmaker Natasha released “The Boom Boom Room” as the follow up but it failed to crack the Top 40 whilst the band Boom Boom Room never hit any higher than No 74 with “Here Comes The Man” despite releasing it twice. The 90s was…ahem…boom time for songs featuring “boom” in their titles. There’s “Boom Boom Boom” by The Outhere Brothers and “Boom! Shake The Room” by DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince both of which were No 1 records. Meanwhile, Apache Indian would score a Top 5 hit with “Boom Shack-A-Lak” in 1993. I’m sure there are more but I think I’ve proved my point. In fact, I think I’ve earned the right to one of these…

Almost two months (TWO MONTHS!) after we first saw Whitney Houston perform “My Love Is Your Love” on the show, we got to see her do it again this week or rather we were just shown a repeat of that initial appearance. Yes, that’s what the once monumentally important TOTP had become by 1999 – a show that would feed us repeats of performances we’d already seen weeks before. OK, that assessment doesn’t really tell the whole story. Presumably when Whitney and her team agreed to record an in person performance for the show, it came with certain conditions. It wasn’t worth her time to do just one song so two tracks were performed – her current single “It’s Not Right But It’s OK” and the follow up “My Love Is Your Love”. I’m pretty sure that was the case anyway. It makes sense. I recently posited a similar theory regarding Cher who I believe did two performances of her hit “All Or Nothing” in the same recording but with two different outfits on! I guess satisfying diva demands was deemed a fair price to pay to get the biggest names in music on the show.

Anyway, the long game strategy played by Whitney’s people paid off for both parties – they had a ready made performance for promotional purposes in the can for the release of “My Love Is Your Love” and TOTP had the exclusive of a studio appearance that they could show. However, why then was said appearance shown on the 14th May show weeks before it was available to buy in the shops? It must have been to plug the album which had been released the previous November surely? Or perhaps the release date of the single got put back? My guess is your guess.

Ah 1999, you really were a pile of shite weren’t you? Pointless, needless, inexplicable hit after hit cluttering up the charts. Hers another example. For some reason, The Three Amigos and their cover version of “Louie Louie” puts me in mind of The Wiseguys* whom we recently saw coming on like a turn of the millennium Blues Brothers with their single “Ooh La La”. Just like those berks, these jerks put the least amount of original thought that they could get away with into their hit. I mean like literally – they chose possibly the world’s most recorded song (2000 different versions at last estimate) and added a rap to it. That’s it pretty much. Such a poor idea was it that some weird visuals were required to sell it so we get the monochrome, 60s style backing dancers (a nod to the popularity of Austin Powers perhaps) and some sort of sci-fi costumes and and a bloke with a beard who I can’t tell if he’s covered in cobwebs or looks like he’s just come out of a cryogenic freezing facility (Austin Powers again). What utter charlatans (just like the characters from the 1986 comedy movie they were presumably named after).

*It turns out that The Wiseguys remixed one of the tracks on the “Louie Louie” single for The Three Amigos. My Spidey senses working well there.

Suede’s commercial peak was starting to decline by the end of the 90s. Although fourth album “Head Music” had followed “Coming Up” (and before that their eponymous debut album) to the top of the charts, it had only sold a third of its predecessor’s copies. Following suit were the singles released from “Head Music”. “She’s In Fashion” would end a run of six releases charting inside the Top 10 when it peaked at No 13. Subsequent singles taken from the album would not even make the Top 20. And yet “She’s In Fashion” is generally regarded as one of the band’s most accessible songs receiving more airplay than any of their previous singles had. It was championed by Radio 1’s Zoe Ball though possibly she saw it as tool for self promotion due to its opening lines:

“She’s the face on the radio, she’s the body on the morning show.”

Writer(s): Brett Lewis Anderson, Neil John Codling

That must be why my immediate association with the song is the broadcaster and presenter. Didn’t she try and make out that it was written about her? I can’t remember now. It’s too long ago. Enough of all that though, was it any good and why did it receive so much airplay? Well, yes it was, certainly compared to the rest of the junk in the charts. I’m guessing its airplay was down to its lighter, breezier sound that almost had a summery feel. Almost. It’s also quite repetitive for a Suede track which probably helped to lodge it in people’s brains and make it possibly one of their best known songs despite not being one of their biggest hits. Apparently the track was written and recorded at a time when Brett Anderson’s drug habit was at its worst but looking at him here, either he’d turned his life around by this point or the make up artist had done an amazing job on him.

Even in the dying light of the 90s, still the disease that blighted the musical landscape of that decade would not yield – yes, we still had time for yet another boyband. This lot were so lightweight that they’d have floated to the surface if chucked in the nearest canal wearing concrete shoes which is possibly a fate they deserved for the bilge they served up. Too harsh? Maybe but having to write about A1 is really trying my patience. A1 – even their name was awful, only beaten in the manky moniker stakes by Blue.

OK, so what was the story behind this shower? It was all down to someone called Tim Byrne who was one of the people involved in setting up Steps apparently. Paul Marrazzi had just missed out on being in that group but Byrne must have seen something in the pop hopeful and so decided to form another band with him in it. Auditions were held and a four piece put together. Presumably Byrne’s track record with Steps helped get A1 a record deal and hey presto!…their debut single “Be The First To Believe” was suddenly in the Top 10 despite sounding like a piss weak version of Steps if such a thing were possible. Surely this lot were destined for just the 15 minutes of fame but no; they would rack up 11 hit singles including (and this is truly mind boggling) two No 1s! One was a cover version of A-ha’s “Take On Me” which I can only describe as depressing.

They would split in 2002 with the obligatory solo careers pursued but would reunite in 2009 for a series of live shows and a persistent dalliance with Norway and the Eurovision Song Contest (member Christian Ingebrigtsen is Norwegian). In 2014 they appeared in that last scraping of the fame barrel known as The Big Reunion alongside the aforementioned Blue, Five, 911, Adam Rickitt etc. When their 20 years anniversary came around in 2019, Marrazzi rejoined for some live shows and the band released some non album singles. They are still together to this day which see seems incredible to me for a band that had so little to offer.

P.S. When I was at secondary school, we had a grading system that was a combination of letters and numbers with the former referring to your level of achievement in a particular subject and the latter the amount of effort you put in. A1 was therefore the highest you could be awarded and you were generally considered a swot if you received that mark. The coolest grade was A5 – you were naturally clever but couldn’t give a toss about applying yourself. In that system, A1 the band should surely have been an E1 – desperate to do well but intrinsically hopeless. And the recipient of the A5 grade in boyband world? I don’t know, East 17 maybe?

Here’s a question – was I already aware of Jennifer Lopez as an actress before she turned her hand to singing or was her debut single “If You Had My Love” my first introduction to her? Let’s have a look. Which films had she been in up to this point?

*checks her filmography*

Nothing I’d seen then nor indeed since I don’t think. Out Of Sight alongside George Clooney seemed to have been her highest box office hit by this point. The truth is that it’s hard to recall our first awarenesses of huge public figures isn’t it? It’s difficult to pinpoint our consciousness in these matters as our memory shifts and re-edits what we knew and when. I think the answer is probably that I knew of her as an actress but hadn’t engaged with her work on any meaningful level until I had to as I was selling her CDs as part of my job at Our Price. Despite this, I’d be hard pushed to name any of her songs (save maybe “Jenny From The Block”) and there’s plenty to choose from – she’s released nine studio albums and 67 singles! I had no idea! As mentioned earlier, “If You Had My Love” was the first of those 67 and it hit immediately going to No 1 in America and No 4 over here. As a Latin-infused, R&B number, it was never going to do much for me but even my ‘pop’ ear (Popeye’s brother) could identify that it was a very serviceable track competently delivered. Parent album “On The 6” would sell 300,000 copies in the UK and 10 times that amount in the US. A superstar was born and she would go by the name of J-Lo. Well, it was snappier than Jenny From The Block I guess.

It’s yet another different No 1 this time from ATB who was German DJ André Tanneberger. Now, if you look at the chart for 6th to the 12th June 1999, you’ll find two separate entries for “9PM (Till I Come)” – one at No 97 and one at No 78. How could this be and how did the track get to No 1 from these lowly positions? Well, it was all down to imports. The release at No 96 was the Australian import and No 78 position was occupied by the German import. Both singles were released on different labels and therefore circumvented chart rules that didn’t allow the same track to occupy separate chart positions. Neither would get higher than No 47 in the charts. Now that might sound like I’m being sniffy but actually a peak of No 47 for an imported single was very respectable and showed a true demand for the track that had initially been released by Ministry of Sound three months earlier when it had peaked at No 68. Confusing isn’t it? Presumably that Ministry of Sound release didn’t have much promotion behind it or it was a limited pressing as the track remained popular in clubland thereby necessitating those import copies being brought into the country to satisfy demand. In the face of this, Ministry of Sound gave it another go, this time aligned with Summer and the Ibiza season and a No 1 was assured. As I wasn’t frequenting the nightclubs of Ibiza in 1999 (nor anywhere actually being in my 30s at this point), this trance track based around a synthesised slide guitar riff, to paraphrase Midge Ure, meant nothing to me.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Vengaboys	Bom Boom Boom Boom	Of course not
2	Whitney Houston	My Love Is Your Love	Nope
3	The Three Amigos	Louie Louie	Never
4	Suede	She’s In Fashion	Decent tune but no
5	A1	Be The First To Believe	No, it was last
6	Jennifer Lopez	If You Had My Love	Nah
7	ATB	9PM (Till I Come)	And no

Disclaimer

I make no claim to the rights of this show and all ownership and contents including logos and graphics belongs totally to the BBC or copyright holder(s).

All opinions on the music and artists featured are my own. Sorry if you don’t agree

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002t695/top-of-the-pops-02071999

TOTP 25 JUN 1999

Posted on 25 Days Ago by 80stastic

It’s Glastonbury time again in these TOTP repeats with the host of this show – Gail Porter – making reference to it in her opening intro. In fact, the festival began on the very same day that this TOTP aired with REM being the headliners on the Friday night followed by Manic Street Preachers on the Saturday and Skunk Anansie closing the whole shebang on the Sunday night. Unlike in previous years, the weather was glorious with a sun drenched three days making the £150,000 spent on downpour precautions redundant. As this is the Glastonbury TOTP Rewind post, it’s that time again when I see if any of the acts on this particular episode ever got to play the festival…

We start with last week’s No 1 “Bring It All Back” by S Club 7 which has dropped to No 2. It was the first of four chart toppers for the group though checking their discography, I’m surprised at the gaps between the first one and the other three. I would have presumed all their first few singles went to No 1 but not so. Their second single to achieve that feat came 18 months later in December 2000 with “Never Had A Dream Come True” which was followed by two more successive No 1s in “Don’t Stop Movin’” in May 2001 and “Have You Ever” in December of the same year. That means that those hits you immediately associate with S Club 7 like “S Club Party” and “Reach” didn’t actually make it to the top which I’m quite shocked by. I mean, I say ‘shocked’ but I probably should say ‘mildly surprised’. The word ‘shocked’ shows a level of engagement in the group which I just don’t have. And yet, their story of success, decline, tragedy and redemption really would make a good film or a decent biopic at least.

Did they ever play Glastonbury? No, they never had that particular dream come true despite expressing a desire to do so following their 25th anniversary reunion announcement in 2023.

Some A grade bullshit from executive producer Chris Cowey next as he recycles a performance by Jamiroquai from three weeks ago for their hit “Canned Heat” which is currently languishing at No 21 in this week’s Top 40 having consistently fallen down the chart from its No 4 debut peak. How has he the brass neck to do this? Easy, just repackage the appearance as being shown to mark the band being at No 1 in the album chart with “Synkronized” (check out the caption graphic) even though there was no regular album chart feature at this point. I get that there were no records going up the charts at all that week but there were seven new entries into the Top 40 that could have been shown instead that weren’t (albeit in the lower reaches of the chart). This stinks of fudging the issue with some disdain for the show’s audience thrown in for good measure.

Did they ever play Glastonbury? Yes. In 1993 on the NME stage and the Pyramid stage in 1995.

There were many things to dislike about the fag end of the 90s charts but one which irked me and confused me in equal measure was the UK’s adoption of US boybands. Didn’t we have enough of our own to contend with?! Did we really need the likes of the Backstreet Boys and this lot – NSYNC – clogging up our Top 40 as well?! I’m sorry, I know all the stats and figures will tell me about how big they were sales wise but they were both terrible. Awful songs, whiny vocals and they weren’t even good looking (Justin Timberlake definitely had problem hair) so how do you explain their popularity then? On top of all that, they were almost interchangeable. Take this hit for example. “Tearin’ Up My Heart” could easily have been a Backstreet Boys song. In fact, if you look at the latter’s discography, they released numerous singles about the ‘heart’.

“I’ll Never Break Your Heart”
“Quit Playing Games (with My Heart)”
“Shape Of My Heart”
“Straight Through My Heart”
“Don’t Go Breaking My Heart”

Come on! It was money for old rope territory. Just to put the final QED touches to my point, “Tearin’ Up My Heart” was originally pitched to the Backstreet Boys to record but NSYNC ended up doing it. Presumably they were with the same record company but I don’t care enough to check. Be gone with you both!

Did they ever play Glastonbury? No, obviously.

Talking of record companies, clearly Britney Spears’ couldn’t wait any longer to release her follow up to “…Baby One More Time” despite the fact that the monster hit was still at No 31 in the UK Top 40 as “Sometimes” rocketed into the charts at No 3. However, what a disappointment it was compared to its predecessor. A mid-tempo ballad was perhaps the obvious choice but it was also predictable (even down to its key change) and when the song was as weak as “Sometimes” then it couldn’t hope to climb as high as her debut. It didn’t help that Britney couldn’t quite reach the notes to sing it but a hit is a hit and it did a job of consolidation especially over here though it would stall at No 21 in America. A return to the “…Baby One More Time” formula would be sought out for subsequent releases on tracks like “(You Drive Me) Crazy” and “Oops!…I Did It Again”. All of those tracks were written and produced by Swede Max Martin who also supplied songs for the aforementioned Backstreet Boys and NSYNC but, perhaps tellingly, “Sometimes” wasn’t*. Martin would go on to write and produce material for Taylor Swift drawing a nice line between female singer superstars from different eras.

*”Sometimes” was written by another Swede in Jörgen Elofsson who would also work with Westlife. Oh God, it was like a Scandinavian version of Stock, Aitken and Waterman!

Did they ever play Glastonbury? No although there were heavy rumours that she would make a surprise appearance during Elton John’s headline set in 2023 following their collaboration on “Hold Me Closer”. The rumours proved to be false.

Think of American pop-punk bands and who comes to mind? Sum 41? Blink-182? Fountains Of Wayne? Third Eye Blind? Weezer? Yep, all good examples but how about Lit? I’d certainly forgotten them (if I even knew them in the first place) but here they are on TOTP with their biggest hit “Own Worst Enemy”. It does sound kind of familiar or maybe I’m just confusing it with all those other bands mentioned above. My fuzzy recall of it though seems to be out of step with the rest of the world though as, according to Wikipedia, it is a huge karaoke favourite and is described in American Songwriter magazine as being:

“among the most broadcasted, karaoked, and covered songs in music history.”

Crone, Madeline (June 1, 2020). “Behind the song: Lit “My Own Worse Enemy”American Songwriter

Wow! Really?! Well it beats “Angels” by Robbie Williams I guess. Lit are still together based around the nucleus of the Popoff brothers Jeremy and A. Jay with their last album being released in 2022.

Did they ever play Glastonbury? That would be a no.

Following ex-EastEnders star Martine McCutcheon into the charts this year was, as host Gail Porter points out, someone from the ‘other side’ meaning from ITV’s Coronation Street. Adam Rickitt had become a pin up before his attempt at pop stardom with his youthful good looks and ripped abdomen building him a fanbase among the nation’s female teenage population via his portrayal of Nick Tilsley. With that following in place, the move into music was a no-brainer and lo, a Top 5 hit was secured with his debut single “I Breathe Again”. Unlike Martine’s No 1 song “Perfect Moment” to which the general public’s reaction was along the lines of “it’s not bad is it?”, Adam’s effort was as anonymous as it was obvious. A Hi-NRG dance track with a deliberately engineered breathy singing style that required very little in the way of vocal chops from Rickitt, it would possibly have sunk without trace without his six pack and that video via which to display them. Featuring a naked Adam in a booth in a lab, it was literally a very steamy promo. We don’t get to see that here though as it was possibly too risqué for the BBC censors. Instead, we get this so obviously mimed performance in which Rickitt actually does very little apart from some upper torso posturing. Seriously, his feet hardly move. There’s a lot of smoke and mirrors going on with his backing dancers doing their best to make him look like he’s even vaguely co-ordinated. On top of everything, he can’t even mine convincingly.

Adam would have two further UK Top 40 hits though surely only his Mum and his superfans (bordering on stalkers) can remember them. He released just the one album called “Good Times” which failed to chart in any meaningful way but here’s the thing – he was signed to a six album deal. WHY?! I may be looking at this all wrong and that this was/is an industry standard practice but who in their right mind thought that Adam Rickitt would last long enough as a pop star to be able to sell SIX albums?! However, Adam did make a comeback 15 years later as part of the ITV manufactured pop group 5th Story who were put together to promote the second series of The Big Reunion. Who were his band mates? Only some of the biggest names in pop! No, of course they weren’t. It was a collection of desperate, famous for 15 minutes chancers including someone from Blazin’ Squad, Kavana and Dane Bowers from Another Level who would light his own farts live on stage if he thought it would keep him in the limelight. Amazingly, according to Wikipedia, 5th Story did play a live gig at the Hammersmith Apollo (presumably as part of The Big Reunion TV show). I can’t believe that the ticket touts were busy for that one.

Did they ever play Glastonbury? I asked AI if Adam Rickitt had ever played the festival and it replied yes in 2023 on the Avalon stage. Flabbergasted, I double checked and it seems it had confused Adam with Will Young. And we’re all worried about AI taking our jobs off us!

If I asked you to name a cover version of Cameo’s “Word Up”, would you immediately turn to Gun’s rock workout of the track or would choose this…well, whatever this is by Mel B, sorry Mel G*? After rather unexpectedly (in my humble opinion) topping the charts with her first single outside of the Spice Girls – her collaboration with Missy Elliott on “I Want You Back” – Mel’s second attempt was recorded as part of the soundtrack to the film Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me. However, unlike Madonna’s “Beautiful Stranger” also from that soundtrack which just missed the top spot, “Word Up” would peak at a presumably disappointing for all concerned No 13. That’s probably more than it deserved (again, in my humble opinion) with Mel’s rendition not retaining any of the original’s spark and bite and instead delivering a lacklustre version that even has the audacity to include that horrible ‘I’ve got a little something for you’ sample that was everywhere around the mid point of the 90s. Gun’s take on it was infinitely better to my ears.

Then there’s Mel’s performance here which she conducts whilst sat down on some sort of throne with just two backing dancers for company. What was that about? Did she have a Dave Grohl style injury that restricted her movements? And why was she made up to look like an extra from a Mad Max movie? Was she channeling her inner Tina Turner? At least she didn’t try to recreate the black and white animated promo video for this performance which was very creepy and dark with sexually suggestive material in it. So ‘scary’ (ahem) was it seemed to be that they had to make another video for the track with Mel wearing a sci-fi style metallic costume with what appeared to be bits of Meccano attached to it.

*”Word Up” would be the only single released under the Mel G moniker after Brown’s marriage to dancer Jimmy Gulzar proved to be short lived. Her insistence on changing it in the first place must have caused a few headaches at her record label.

Did they ever play Glastonbury? Despite persistent rumours, Mel B has never played Glastonbury either as a solo artist or as part of the Spice Girls. Mel C, however, played a DJ set there in 2022 and with her own band in 2023.

Though it was never really in doubt, it’s now officially confirmed – chart music in 1999 was utter shite. How can you arrive at any other conclusion when you have tripe like “Boom Boom Boom Boom” by Vengaboys at No 1?! I mean, it’s barely music. It’s more like a demented nursery rhyme. Who was buying this? Pre-school kids? No, it must have been adults as I would no doubt have sold lots of the single as I was working for Our Price at the time and I don’t remember a bunch of five year olds forming an orderly queue to purchase the single. As for their performance here, they look and sound like a hybrid of 2 Unlimited and The Village People. What on earth was happening?

Did they ever play Glastonbury? Hell no!

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	S Club 7	Bring It All Back	Nope
2	Jamiroquai	Canned Heat	Negative
3	NSYNC	Tearin’ Up My Heart	Of course not
4	Britney Spears	Sometimes	Nah
5	Lit	Own Worst Enemy	I did not
6	Adam Rickitt	I Breathe Again	I’d rather hold my breath forever
7	Mel B/G	Word Up	No
8	Vengaboys	Boom Boom Boom Boom	NEVER EVER!

Disclaimer

I make no claim to the rights of this show and all ownership and contents including logos and graphics belongs totally to the BBC or copyright holder(s).

All opinions on the music and artists featured are my own. Sorry if you don’t agree

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002t693/top-of-the-pops-25061999

TOTP 18 JUN 1999

Posted on 27 Days Ago by 80stastic

I’ve just checked and this is the 750th TOTP Rewind post! Yes, over both the 80s and 90s sites, the combined number of posts has reached 750. I couldn’t have believed I’d get anywhere near that number when I started this nine years ago. In fairness, I couldn’t have imagined keeping this up for nine years but here I am. However, all good things (and distinctly average ones) must come to an end and I’m declaring when I get to the end of the 1999 BBC4 repeats. As Jude Law says in that Uber Eats ad – “It’s exhausting!”. As such I don’t think I’ll quite make the 800 milestone post so I’m celebrating this one. Let’s hope there are some suitable performances on this TOTP show to commemorate this historic post…

Our host is Jamie Theakston (again!) and we start with…oh no…this can’t be right! Why were The Wiseguys back in the show with “Ooh La La”? After debuting at No 2 a fortnight previously, it began a constant descent down the charts going to No 5 and then No 9 in this particular week. That decline was never reversed once. To show it again was just nonsensical. Had it been kicking around the Top 5 for weeks on end or gone back up the charts at some point then maybe I could have understood another airing but this just defies logic. Presumably the final decision on this came from executive producer Chris Cowey – the definitive opposite of a wise guy.

Hmm. This 750th post hasn’t started well and now it’s taken an even bigger turn for the worse. A definite nosedive in quality. It’s only bloody Shania Twain with “That Don’t Impress Me Much”. This was the third time on the show for this one and as much as it annoys me, it had spent three weeks at No 2 and two at No 4 since its debut appearance so Chris Cowey could make a decent stab at defending making room for it in the running order again. I really can’t be arsed to vent about this one anymore so I’ll just ask the question of why Shania had the actor, presenter and writer Stephen Mangan playing bass for her in this performance? Seriously, complete doppelgänger. Even if it was him, big deal. Okay, so you’re Stephen Mangan…that don’t impress me much.

Finally a new song which was also the final single release of the 90s for one of the biggest artists on the planet (at the time). I always thought that “Beautiful Stranger” was a curious Madonna hit. Maybe it’s because it was a one-off release being part of a movie soundtrack rather than a Madge studio album that added to that feeling. Or maybe it’s that it sounds like it could so easily have been included on her last album “Ray Of Light” but wasn’t. Or maybe it’s the peculiar song structure it has where it seems to build to a payoff chorus but we never really get one but just a rather flat “Da-da-da-da, da-da-da-da, da-da-da-da-dum” refrain. Or maybe it’s just that I never got the appeal of the whole Austin Powers thing which “Beautiful Stranger” was a part of being the lead single from the soundtrack of the second film in the franchise – Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me. Seriously though, it can’t be just me that doesn’t get the humour of that character surely? Even the title of the film is completely puerile. I get it’s meant to be satirical, sending up the whole James Bond phenomenon and TV spy series like Jason King but I just find the Austin Powers character intensely stupid and annoying. All that sexual innuendo and those inane catchphrases just leave me cold. Maybe it’s Mike Myers himself I just can’t be doing with as I never found Wayne’s World that humorous either.

Anyway, back to Madonna and “Beautiful Stranger” and it’s no wonder that it sounds like it could have been included the “Ray Of Light” album as it was written and produced with William Orbit who was also Madonna’s collaborative partner for said album. I’m guessing that the 60s styles and cultural references within the film also influenced the sound of the track which delivers a pop song with psychedelic leanings and an almost ethereal quality. It’s not bad but it’s just doesn’t have much substance to it. In various ‘Madonna’s Best Singles’ polls, whilst it appears in the rankings, it’s mostly a pretty lowly position (e.g. in March 2023, Billboard ranked the song as Madonna’s 88th greatest ever).

As for the video, it’s obviously based around the portrayal of the Austin Powers character with him fantasising about scenarios of him and Madonna together but there’s not a lot to it compared to some of the singer’s iconic promos from her past (“Like A Virgin”, “Like A Prayer”, “Vogue” etc). We do get a little bit extra with Madge giving us a personal intro nicely woven into the scene where Powers receives a message from his boss Basil Exposition via a screen in his car. It’s a nice touch but Madonna performing the track in the TOTP studio would have been a much bigger coup. Ultimately, “Beautiful Stranger” would lose out on another UK No 1 to a bunch of British kids with an insanely catchy pure pop number and a hit TV show. The times they were-a-changin’.

Oh come on! This is meant to be a celebratory, milestone post and the artists in this TOTP are making a mockery of it and none more so than this lot! Of all the shit that these 1999 repeats have flung at us so far, surely Cartoons stink the most? Did we just accept this crap at the time? We should have been out on the streets protesting shouldn’t we?! How do we explain this to our children?! Watching them perform “DooDah” is like suddenly finding yourself in an alternate universe where all the norms and practices of pop music have been replaced by a honking clown car. Actually, it’s the musical equivalent of the Trump administration. Their grotesque, oversized wigs make that comparison hold even more water.

For the record, “DooDah” was clearly based on the 1850 folk song “Camptown Races” by American composer Stephen Foster. Introduced into the mainstream by blackface troupe Christy’s Minstrels, it was used as the centrepiece of this excellent satirical scene from Blazing Saddles to lampoon its origin.

P.S. Blazing Saddles also gives us the most accurate description of what is going on in the White House currently…

Tatyana Ali’s pop career was a bit blink-and-you’ll-miss-it. Three singles in and this was already her final hit. “Everytime” was the smallest of them peaking at No 20. Is it coincidence that it was the first that didn’t seem to have anything to do with Will Smith? “Boy You Knock Me Out” featured a rap from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air whilst her first – “Daydreamin’” – came with a personal endorsement from Smith who did a specially recorded intro for Ali’s debut performance on TOTP. Maybe it didn’t perform as well as its predecessors because it wasn’t that good? It’s very pedestrian never really getting out of first gear. Her album “Kiss The Sky” also failed to sell in huge quantities making little impression on the US or UK charts which would lead to her being dropped by her label by the end of the year. Maybe Ali’s decision to tour with the Backstreet Boys as referenced in Jamie Theakston’s intro wasn’t the right choice after all?

Right, what’s going on here then? Well yes, obviously it’s Cher performing her single “All Or Nothing” for the second week on the spin but there’s something odd occurring that I’ve noticed. Cher has different hair and a different costume from what she was sporting seven days prior but her backing dancers appear to be exactly the same people wearing exactly the same outfits from the last show. Could it be that Cher recorded two performances back to back but did a whole wardrobe and wig change in between to fool us into thinking they were recorded a week apart? I haven’t gone completely forensic by trying to identify if the studio audience is the same but in both appearances, Jamie Theakston is not there in person to do his intro, rather there is a cutaway to clearly prerecorded footage. If I’m right, why would all concerned in this have done it? Would there have been protests outside the BBC if they’d just reshown the first performance? I think not. If the population couldn’t rouse itself to take to the streets about Cartoons then surely there was no chance of any push back against this? Mark it down as another weird happening during the Chris Cowey era.

There’s more strangeness now as we get some unusual symmetry between the next artist and one that we saw earlier. When I said Tatyana Ali had a brief career, I guess you could say the same about Lauryn Hill, in terms of their discographies anyway. One album and three singles lifted from it was the same for both singers with said singles achieving very similar chart peaks:

Tatyana Ali – No 6 – No 3 – No 20
Lauryn Hill – No 3 – No 4 – No 20

Those No 20 singles even had similar titles. For Tatyana it was “Everytime” and for Lauryn we had “Everything Is Everything”. Despite its moderate UK chart performance, it was well received by the music press and was nominated for a Grammy and a Soul Train Lady Of Soul award. Both Ali and Hill’s music careers would come to a halt as the new millennium dawned; the former as mentioned earlier after being dropped by her label and the latter because she became disillusioned with the trappings of fame and sought solace in religion, attending bible study classes five days a week. Both would also have acting careers alongside their music ones with Tatyana auditioning (unsuccessfully) for Sister Act 2: Back In The Habit which Lauryn starred in. Everything is everything indeed.

We have another new No 1 and it’s from a group who were pure, unadulterated pop. S Club 7 had already been given TOTP exposure six weeks prior to the release of their debut single “Bring It All Back” so they had a very long run up to topping the chart at the first attempt. Not only that but they’d appeared briefly on last week’s show for a ten seconds interview with Jamie Theakston when he basically said “It’s you or Madonna for No 1 next week” to which one of them (Jon?) replied that they were taking nothing for granted because Madge was the Queen of Pop or something like that. I don’t recall Theakston saying he thought S Club 7 would definitely win out as he says he predicted in this intro. Maybe he said it on his Radio 1 show. Anyway, that first appearance was a promo video but this time see get the group hyper-jigging about in the studio. Although Jo O’Meara would be the designated lead vocalist on most of their hits, all four of the girls get a go at singing out front whilst the boys are offered some backing vocals spotlight. Look, we’re going to see this one twice more in these BBC4 repeats so I think I’ll leave it there for now.

It wasn’t quite the line up I’d hoped for to celebrate my 750th post but then again, what did I expect from TOTP in 1999?

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	The Wiseguys	Ooh La La	Get to f**k!
2	Shania Twain	That Don’t Impress Me Much	Heavens no!
3	Madonna	Beautiful Stranger	No
4	Cartoons	DooDah	Seriously?! Of course not
5	Tatyana Ali	Everytime	Negative
6	Cher	All Or Nothing	Nope
7	Lauryn Hill	Everything Is Everything	I did not
8	S Club 7	Bring It All Back	Nah

Disclaimer

I make no claim to the rights of this show and all ownership and contents including logos and graphics belongs totally to the BBC or copyright holder(s).

All opinions on the music and artists featured are my own. Sorry if you don’t agree

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002sw9g/top-of-the-pops-18061999

TOTP 11 JUN 1999

Posted on March 27 by 80stastic

After a rare, half decent show last week, could we be about to begin a run of better hits and performances? Well, I don’t know about that but what I am certain of is that seven of the eight songs on this one we haven’t seen before. However, we start with an ex-No 1 from a month ago which is back on the show because…? Because “I Want It That Way” by the Backstreet Boys had gone back up from No 9 to No 7. As Peter Crouch might say, “Big Deal!”. What’s that? It was a big deal? What because it sold 3 million copies in the US, because it was No 1 in just about every territory on the planet and because it was the 15th biggest selling boyband single of the 1990s in the UK selling 423,300 copies? Because of those things? Yeah, I don’t care. Big deal. NEXT!

In the late 90s mini-movement that was instrument playing all girl groups, after Hepburn and before Thunderbugs came 21st Century Girls. Though they had a name that suggested forthcoming longevity, this lot really were a case of blink and you’ll miss them. They were the protégés of music mogul Simon Fuller whose influence on the industry, though substantial, would become ever more pervasive in the years that followed. After being infamously sacked as the manager of the Spice Girls, he’d turned his attention to a Monkees-esque project for the 90s in S Club 7 but still had time to launch another all girl group. And this lot really were girls aged between 14 and 16 at the time that their debut single – also called “21st Century Girls” – hit the charts. Hailing from Dudley in the West Midlands, they’d formed a band st school and were spotted by a talent scout for Ian Allen’s Creative Management company. Allen managed Next of Kin who’d had a No 13 hit with “24 Hours From You” in 1999 so he had a track record for spotting young potential and getting them into the charts. He would duly do the same with 21st Century Girls but only after he’d given their demo CD to Fuller who immediately signed the group to his 19 Recordings label.

“I wanted something different – an antidote to all that is sterile and artificial about the music scene. I’m on a mission to take this band, which is pure and unadulterated and make them the biggest thing ever.”

Fulton, Rick; Daily Record (Glasgow, Scotland); April 23, 1999.

Hmm. Methinks he doth protest too much especially as Fuller proceeded to spend thousands to promote his “pure and unadulterated” group, a saturation project that resulted in a No 16 charting debut single and an appearance on TOTP. Was that an acceptable return on Fuller’s investment? Possibly not but these were literally just kids we’re talking about – the weight of responsibility to succeed was completely unreasonable. Indeed, Fuller was on record as saying that 21st Century Girls would be bigger than the Spice Girls – strike unreasonable and replace it with intolerable. Then there’s the music itself. In its favour, it didn’t sound much like Fuller’s former charges what with their influences were Green Day and Garbage. In the debit column, it wasn’t very good nor original. Their song was full of forced raucousness and naive, clunky lyrics* with a sound that was a melting pot of Republica, Transvision Vamp and Shampoo. It was meant to be a heady brew but it ended up being a concoction that was flavourless.

*If they wrote them, their age is a defence. If they were written for them, I guess it was part of their image but still.

They would not release another single in the UK presumably because Fuller lost interest (and the fact that S Club 7 took off) though a follow up and album were made available in Japan where the aforementioned Shampoo had been similarly massive. And so ended the tale of 21st Century Girls who never even made it out of the 20th century.

When I think about the film Notting Hill, or more specifically the music from it, I think of Elvis Costello’s version of “She” or Ronan Keating’s take on “When You Say Nothing At All”. At a push, maybe “Gimme Some Lovin’” by Spencer Davis Group which soundtracks the car scene as Hugh Grant’s character tries to get to a press conference at the Savoy Hotel. Or even “Ain’t No Sunshine” by Bill Withers which plays as the passing of time scene after Julia Roberts’ character has left London. At no point would my mind have turned to “From The Heart” by Another Level. Is it even in the film?

“Checks the internet*

Just as I thought; it doesn’t appear as a prominent background song during a main dialogue scene during the whole movie. Apparently, it features over the credits at some point but that must be well into them as “When You Say Nothing At All” plays at the end of the movie. Having said all of that, I don’t think Wet Wet Wet’s cover of “Love Is All Around” is heard in Four Weddings And A Funeral (which Notting Hill was a sequel to just about) until the credits have long since stated rolling. Anyway, my point is that I don’t recall Another Level’s contribution to the Notting Hill soundtrack at all and it’s one of those films I tend to watch if I happen upon it while channel hopping so I know it pretty well. Plus, we must have played the soundtrack in the Our Price where I was working a few times at least seeing as it went platinum in the UK. Punters in America who did buy the album however, got a slightly different track listing which omitted “In Our Lifetime” by Texas and instead included “No Matter What” by Boyzone. Why? Good question. That track doesn’t feature in the film at all what with it being from the soundtrack to the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Whistle Down The Wind. What gives? AI tells me that the song was used in the promotion of Notting Hill in America with an alternate version of the song’s music video produced specifically featuring clips of Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant interspersed with the band. That still doesn’t explain why? What was the association? I don’t get it. What’s that? Ronan Keating is the link? That’s it?! Nah, I’m not having it. Pure nonsense. Eh? What about Another Level’s song? I repeat, I’m not having it. Pure nonsense.

The return of The Chemical Brothers next who were hoping to replicate the success of their previous No 1 hits “Setting Sun” and “Block Rockin’ Beats” from ‘96 and ‘97 respectively. They came close with “Hey Boy Hey Girl” which was the lead single from third album “Surrender”. This was, I believe, what was known as a ‘bangin’ tune’. With its distinctive, repeated lyric and insistent, almost alarm-like back beat, you just couldn’t ignore this one. Oh yeah, that lyric. I’ve never noticed this before but the order of the single’s title is reversed in the words spoken on the track. Look…

“Hey girls Hey boys

Superstar DJs Here we go”

Writer(s): Richard Lee Fowler, Charles Pettiford, Gregory Carlton Wigfall, Edmund John Simons, Jerry Bloodrock, Thomas Owen Mostyn Rowlands, Celita Evans

I wonder why that was? I don’t think it makes too much difference in the way that it scans. As for the “superstar DJs” line, that always reminds me of the staff rota at the Our Price store I was working in when this single was out. Why? This is really niche and probably of no interest to anyone else reading this but it is my blog so…for my own personal amusement when compiling the weekly staff rota of who was in and when, sometimes I would allocate nicknames to my colleagues. So Suzanne was Skipper (can’t remember why), Lisa was Looby-Loo (from Andy Pandy – again no idea why) and then there was a guy called Richard who only worked on a Saturday but who loved his dance music so he was…of course…Superstar DJ. Look, I did warn you that this anecdote wouldn’t be interesting to anyone else!

What was interesting though was the video that gets shown here. Starting with the story of a girl on a school trip to the Natural History Museum who fractures her arm, it follows her into being an adult and going to a nightclub. Dominant throughout the promo is the imagery of all the human beings she encounters as being reduced to just bones, literally skeletons. Again I ask, what was that all about? A tribute to the climatic scene in 1963 movie Jason And The Argonauts when the titular heroes have to fight seven armed skeletons – ‘the children of the Hydra’s teeth’?

The version shown on TOTP, as hinted at by host Jamie Theakston, is heavily edited with a scene of a couple having sex in a nightclub toilet both in the flesh and as skeletons removed. Having seen the full version, there was no way that was getting past the censors. Quite what the idea behind the cutback shots to the studio audience watching the video on a big screen was I’m not sure. It’s not as if they’re even dancing enthusiastically but rather just milling about. Sort of. Very odd.

There was a third single from Cher’s “Believe” album?! Yes, there was and a fourth actually but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Though she wasn’t averse to a cover version, “All Or Nothing” wasn’t Cher’s take on the Small Faces’ classic hit but yet another track with 90s disco anthem pretensions but to my ears it was just a watered down version of “Strong Enough” which itself was the poor relation of “Believe”. Did every song on the album sound the same? There’s a slight deviation in the middle where it goes a bit “I Feel Love” by Donna Summer but then that’s just copying someone else rather than yourself.

After some of her previous outfits down the years, Cher has come to the studio in a dress-down-Friday, casual style. Her bright red hair still hints at her sense of the glamorous life though. As was almost inevitable, all the singles released from the “Believe” album would peak at a lower chart position than the one before it with “All Or Nothing” making it to No 12. I guess it was unreasonable to expect every hit to be as big as the commercial whopper that “Believe” (the song) was.

If pressed, I would have said that Feeder didn’t turn up until into the new millennium but here they were in 1999 with their fourth Top 40 hit “Insomnia”. Clearly they didn’t register on my radar back then and I now realise that they can only have bleeped for the first time when “Buck Rogers” was a Top 5 hit in 2001. Listening to them in 2026, is it fair to say they were/are like a UK version of Green Day? After all, they did have an album called “Insomniac” (ahem). Ok, Ok – not a UK version but a Welsh one. I’m nothing if not fastidious about facts. To back that claim up, I should really say that they are a Welsh-Japanese hybrid with founding member and bassist Taka Hirose being from Japan.

Looking at Feeder’s discography, I was a little surprised to see that they have released twelve studio albums with the most recent coming in 2024. Having said that, the first one came in 1997 so that’s twelve in just under 30 years. Is that a lot or not that many? More than one every three years is pretty consistent I would say. And yet the extent of my knowledge of them is pretty much the aforementioned “Buck Rogers”. Sometimes I wonder what my credentials for writing a music blog are at all.

I had the briefest of dalliances with the Red Hot Chili Peppers back in 1994 when I could no longer ignore a rerelease of “Under The Bridge”. Having been a No 26 hit in 1992, my purchase of it two years later helped it to spend two weeks at No 13. The CD single I bought included a version of “Give It Away” which I also liked. That was as far as my commitment went though and I pretty much ignored 1995’s “One Hot Minute” album. However, even my lukewarm interest was reignited by 1999’s “Californication” album. Now, let me be upfront and open – I didn’t actually buy it but I could certainly appreciate its wares starting with lead single “Scar Tissue”.

This was the more melodic side of the band that had first drawn me in via “Under The Bridge”. Indeed, comparisons highlighting similarities between the two tracks wouldn’t have been that wide of the mark. Based around the marvellously meandering guitar riffs of the returning John Frusciante, it was a great example of the band at the height of their powers. Indeed, it was so popular in America that it spent a record breaking 16 weeks atop the US Billboard Hot Modern Rock Tracks chart. It should surely have hit higher in the UK than its No 15 peak. As a song to perform on their very first visit to the TOTP studio, it was certainly a high bar. “Californication” would become one of the band’s biggest ever albums going five times platinum in the UK and eight times platinum in the US.

We’ve arrived at one of the strangest No 1 records of not just the 90s but perhaps of all time. A bold claim but what other word would you use to describe the success of “Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen)” by Baz Luhrmann other than strange. This one took me totally by surprise though many punters were one step ahead of me (despite my working in a record shop) and asking for it well before its official release. I clearly hadn’t been listening to Chris Moyles on Radio 1 who led a campaign to make it a hit. So what was it all about? The story of the record starts with the essay ‘Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young’ which was written by American journalist Mary Schmich and published in the June 1, 1997 issue of the Chicago Tribune. It was written as a hypothetical commencement speech given to graduating students, in which Schmich dispenses various pieces of advice for living a happy life with persistent references to using sunscreen having seen a young woman sunbathing and hoping she was wearing sufficient sun protection. An urban legend developed around the article suggesting that it was, in fact, a genuine commencement speech made by the author Kurt Vonnegut at MIT.

Enter Australian film director Baz Luhrmann who was working on a remix of Rozalla’s “Everybody’s Free (To Feel Good)” for his “Something For Everybody” album, a track he’d used a version of on the soundtrack to his film William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet. Aware of the supposed Vonnegut speech, he decided to use it in the remix but wasn’t sure he could get clearance from the author in time. Looking for Vonnegut’s contact details, he became aware of the true source of the speech and was able to get consent from Schmich. Narrated by Australian voice actor Lee Perry (not the ‘Scratch’ version) it would become a member of that most exclusive of genres – the spoken word hit alongside J J Barrie’s “No Charge” and “If” by Telly Savalas. To be honest, I’d forgotten how it went and listening back to it on this TOTP repeat, I found it completely underwhelming and myself nonplussed about why there had been such a huge fuss about it in the first place. Despite said hype and amid claims that it would be one of the biggest sellers of the year (it wasn’t), it lasted just three weeks inside the Top 10. The whole episode was completely bizarre.

So did this episode continue the quality of last week’s show? Probably not. There was an awful lot of crap though the Chemical Brothers and Red Hot Chili Peppers readdressed the balance handsomely with a mention in dispatches for Feeder.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Backstreet Boys	I Want It That Way	Never
2	21st Century Girls	21st Century Girls	Negative
3	Another Level	From The Heart	Nah
4	The Chemical Brothers	Hey Boy Hey Girl	Nope
5	Cher	All Or Nothing	Nothing then
6	Feeder	Insomnia	No
7	Red Hot Chili Peppers	Scar Tissue	Liked it, didn’t buy it
8	Baz Luhrmann	Everybody’s Free (To Wear Sunscreen)	I did not

Disclaimer

I make no claim to the rights of this show and all ownership and contents including logos and graphics belongs totally to the BBC or copyright holder(s).

All opinions on the music and artists featured are my own. Sorry if you don’t agree

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002sw98/top-of-the-pops-11061999

TOTP 04 JUN 1999

Posted on March 24 by 80stastic

This TOTP was broadcast two days before my 31st birthday in 1999 and as I recall, on the big day, I got rip-roaring drunk with various friends and work colleagues at my flat. I think I ended up prostrate on the floor unable to stir myself to even say goodbye to people. Bit embarrassing really especially as I would have been at work the next day with some of the people who would have seen me in that state. Not professional at all. Judging by the date stamp on the photo below and by my smiling face, I’d recovered by the following Thursday though. Why was that photo taken? I have no idea 27 years on (this would have been before smartphones with cameras remember) but I’m guessing we might have been going to the pub after work (probably the same Bricklayers Arms as referenced in my last post) which, if true, demonstrates an unhealthy commitment to alcohol consumption on my behalf! Anyway, drinking habits aside, what else was happening in my world back then and which hits might I have been selling over the counter?*

*Apart from Madonna’s “Beautiful Stranger” single and Geri Halliwell’s “Schizophonic” album judging by the posters in the shop window. And is that an advert for the Gay Dad album? Blimey! The bods at Head Office got that one wrong!

Jamie Theakston is our host and we start with Sixpence None The Richer who are riding high in the charts with “Kiss Me” at No 5. This one understandably got a lot of daytime radio airplay including from Mark and Lard on their Radio 1 afternoon show who would refer to the band as Sixpence None The Wiser. I used to enjoy listening to them if I found myself upstairs in the shop off the counter doing something. Featuring characters like Fat Harry White, spoof phone-in quizzes like Bird Or Bloke and surreal segments such as One Man And His Frog (“Come-bye yer bitch”), it was almost appointment listening. Sadly, the BBC, in their predictably short-sighted way, called time on Mark and Lard in 2004 with their final Radio 1 show being broadcast on 26 March. Lard’s catchphrase of “Stop!…Carry on” was heartbreakingly truncated to a final “Stop!” and some of the most entertaining daytime radio ever broadcast was gone forever.

Look at this! A No 2 hit no less which I have zero recall of! Maybe I didn’t have the constitution of an ox and I was just drunk at work as well as at the flat (I wasn’t, honest). The fact remains though that listening to “Ooh La La” by The Wiseguys now is like hearing it for the first time. No, not the first time as it sounds like one of those late 80s/early 90s sample heavy, house tunes such as “Hear the Drummer (Get Wicked)” or some such like.

Apparently, its success was down to the Budweiser advert below which again I don’t remember. Not this particular one with the crocodile anyway – anyone around at that time is familiar with the croaking frogs Bud, Weis, and Er, a forerunner of the whole “Whassup?” campaign.

“Ooh La La” was just dreadful shout-and-response nonsense and who were those berks in collars and ties up there on stage sticking it to us? One looks a bit like a young Louis Theroux and the other like Keith from The Office. Did they think they were some sort of turn of the millennium Blues Brothers? Thankfully they only had this one hit before the record buying public got wise to these guys and ignored them. Oh, and if I wanted someone to shout “Ho!” then I would choose this guy every time…

From a hit for the feeble-minded to something much more engaging. “You Look So Fine” was the fifth and final single released in the UK from Garbage’s sophomore album “Version 2.0” which was already one year old by this point so it’s not really surprising that it secured the lowest chart position of those five hits when it debuted at its peak of No 19. However, far from being a Michael Jackson fan-fleecing style release, the band had seemingly put some thought into it when they initiated a remix trading arrangement with Fun Lovin’ Criminals. You may recall that the New York hip-hoppers had recently been on the show with their hit “Korean Bodega”. That single included a remix by Garbage (which was specifically advertised on the cover artwork) and Fun Lovin’ Criminals reciprocated by producing a version of “You Look So Fine” as a slowed down, lounge standard which I think I actually prefer.

That’s not to say the original album version isn’t any good. The last track on “Version 2.0”, it shows a softer side to the band whilst retaining their alternative rock profile. The band’s drummer and co-producer Butch Vig is on record as describing it as his favourite track on the album due to its “Carpenters covers Sonic Youth quality”. Hang on. Shouldn’t that be the other way round…

Apparently the strings outro was added after the song had been initially recorded when Shirley Manson came into the studio after watching the Titanic film. She’d hated it but did draw inspiration from its soundtrack to give “You Look So Fine” a more cinematic style. The band would take that filmic theme and go stratospheric with it with their next single – the James Bond song “The World Is Not Enough” – a release which would catapult Garbage into another universe altogether.

After teaming up with the groover from Vancouver that is Bryan Adams for their hit “Cloud #9”, Chicane continued to work with other artists for next release “Saltwater” by joining forces with Máire Brennan of Clannad. It was quite the contrast in collaborations. However, it wasn’t the first time that Máire had made a record with someone else. Back in 1986, the shimmering “In A Lifetime” featuring Bono was a No 20 hit for Clannad (and a No 17 when rereleased to promote their Best Of album “Pastpresent”). “Saltwater” was something completely different. Nothing to do with Julian Lennon’s 1991 song – actually, I’d quite have liked it if it was – in fact, it was based upon another Clannad song and perhaps there most famous one. “Theme From Harry’s Game” had gone Top 5 in 1982 off the back of the success of the ITV drama Harry’s Game about the Troubles in Northern Ireland. It remains the only British hit single ever to have been sung entirely in Irish. Máire Brennan would re-record those lyrics (along with some new ones) in 1999 for Chicane to use to create “Saltwater”. A UK dance chart No 1 (it also made a healthy No 6 on the Top 40), its trance beats melded miraculously well with Brennan’s haunting, melancholic vocals creating an unusual dance classic. The celestial-type choir in virginal white backing Máire here adds to the ethereal vibe. I wonder if her younger sister Enya was watching at home thinking “I could have done that”.

The return of Supergrass next whom we had not seen nor heard for nigh on 20 months since their last chart appearance. After their first two albums had gone to No 1 and No 2 in the charts respectively, expectations were high for their eponymously titled third album. It didn’t disappoint when it went to No 3 and furnished the band with two of their most well known hits. The first of those was “Pumping On Your Stereo”, a rousing, stomper of a song that more than a little fed into the band’s glam rock influences. Like breakthrough hit “Alright” (though also nothing like it at all), it was immediately memorable with that chant-a-long chorus and just a little risqué with the double entendre of replacing “pumping” with “humping” in the repeated stanza. It deserved a higher placing than its No 11 peak.

Whilst the performance here is adequately enjoyable, it would be remiss of me not to mention the official video for the single. Perhaps one of the most fun promos of the decade, the Jim Henson designed puppet costumes created an entrancing illusion with no trace of CGI. Essentially using the puppeteer/black backdrop effect employed in 70s children’s TV show Paper Play presented by Susan Stranks, the elongated puppet bodies also lent the video the faintest whiff of the sinister akin to 1986’s Labyrinth starring David Bowie as Jareth, King of the Goblins.

I particularly like drummer Danny Goffey’s telescopic legs which make him look almost arachnid-like. It made for a much better image than just modelling Goffey as The Muppets drummer Animal from fictional group Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem. That goes for the rest of the band as well. I’m not sure that Gaz Coombes as Dr Teeth and Mick Quinn as Floyd would have worked at all well either.

Three albums into their career and Shed Seven were already at the Greatest Hits stage with the release of the album “Going For Gold”. Could that position be justified?

*checks Shed Seven discography*

Well, they had clocked up twelve Top 40 hits by this point which would certainly be enough to comprise a Greatest Hits album. However, of those twelve, only one made the Top 10 and just five peaked between the positions 20 and 11. Having checked the track listing for “Going For Gold”, I can confirm that all twelve of those chart hits were included within a 15 song set which was completed by debut single “Mark” which failed to make the Top 40 and two new songs. The first of those was “Disco Down” which was released to promote the collection. This was a great little song with a choppy intro that drew you in from the very start, a sweeping, string-laden bridge leading into a gloriously uplifting chorus with the pay off of a killer final line. Absolutely one of the band’s best ever recordings and absolutely worthy of spearheading a Best Of campaign.

“Going For Gold: The Greatest Hits” would go Top 10 and achieve (very appropriately) gold status. However, it would also be the harbinger of a break up between the band and their label Polydor. Shed Seven themselves had questioned the validity of releasing a Best Of album so early in their career but had agreed after securing consent from Polydor that they could release two new singles from it. “Disco Down” had been the first and was supposed to be followed by “High Hopes” but Polydor reneged on the agreement, wanting to re-release “Going For Gold” instead. The band saw this as short changing their fanbase and this would ultimately lead to them parting ways with their label. In the intervening years, they have released four more albums including 2024’s No 1 “A Matter Of Time” and also that year, “Liquid Gold”, an album consisting of re-imagined/re-recorded versions of their songs. This would follow “A Matter Of Time” to the top of the charts giving them two No 1 albums in the same calendar year, a feat achieved by very few artists.

After having reached critical mass commercially when their third album “Travelling Without Moving” went quadruple platinum, Jamiroquai kept that momentum going by scoring their first ever No 1 single with “Deeper Underground” from the Godzilla soundtrack. By 1999, the pressure to maintain that run must have been on and Jay Kay responded to it with fourth album “Synkronized” and it did well. Really well. It topped the UK charts going platinum in the process. However, success is relative and ultimately it sold less than half the amount of copies of its predecessor worldwide. You couldn’t fault the expansive exuberance of lead single “Canned Heat” though with its retro 70s disco feel and strong Saturday Night Fever symptoms. The album itself was generally well received but with a few dissenting voices. The critic Tom Moon said of it:

“Canned Heat” and several other tracks are thinly veiled rewrites of “Virtual Insanity” and the other radio songs from “Travelling Without Moving”

Moon, Tom (9 July 1999). “Jamiroquai expands on its ‘70s influences: [Final Edition]”. Las Vegas Review-Journal.

And that was my problem with Jamiroquai. It really was all starting to sound the same. Retread after retread of what had gone before. It was fine in short bursts but the idea of listening to a whole album of it? I’d rather turn up for work with a stinking hangover (and I knew all too well what that felt like as we have already discussed earlier).

Shanks & Bigfoot remain at No 1 for a second week with “Sweet Like Chocolate”. Again we get the animated video rather than a studio performance. Did the duo not like the limelight? Had they had a heavy weekend on the lash like I had and weren’t up to an in person appearance? If so, they had my sympathies.

Order of appearance	Artist	Title	Did I buy it?
1	Sixpence None The Richer	Kiss Me	I did not
2	The Wiseguys	Ooh La La	Heavens no!
3	Garbage	You Look So Fine	Negative
4	Chicane / Máire Brennan	Saltwater	Nope
5	Supergrass	Pumping On Your Stereo	No but I had the parent album
6	Shed Seven	Disco Down	No but I think I had that Greatest Hits album it came from
7	Jamiroquai	Canned Heat	Nah
8	Shanks & Bigfoot	Sweet Like Chocolate	No

Disclaimer

I make no claim to the rights of this show and all ownership and contents including logos and graphics belongs totally to the BBC or copyright holder(s).

All opinions on the music and artists featured are my own. Sorry if you don’t agree

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002sjbl/top-of-the-pops-04061999